Ella Creamer in The Guardian:
A novel about a Palestinian woman who participates in a pyramid scheme reselling Birkin bags has won this year’s Swansea University Dylan Thomas prize.
Palestinian journalist Yasmin Zaher took home the £20,000 prize – awarded to writers aged 39 or under in honour of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, who died at that age – for her debut novel The Coin. She was announced as the winner at a ceremony in Swansea, Thomas’s birthplace.
The Coin, chosen in a unanimous decision by judges, “is a borderless novel, tackling trauma and grief with bold and poetic moments of quirkiness and humour”, said writer and judging chair Namita Gokhale. “It fizzes with electric energy”, with Zaher bringing “complexity and intensity to the page through her elegantly concise writing”.
Born in 1991 in Jerusalem, Zaher studied biomedical engineering at Yale University and creative writing at the New School, where she was advised by the novelist Katie Kitamura.
More here.
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