Yasmin Zaher has won the 2025 Dylan Thomas Prize, given annually to “the best published literary work in the English language, written by an author aged 39 or under,” for her debut novel, The Coin.
Zaher’s novel, published last July by Catapult, follows a young Palestinian middle-school teacher in New York who gets caught up in a scheme reselling Hermès Birkin bags. A critic for Kirkus called the book, which was also a finalist for the Gotham Prize, “a perilous journey, rendered in sensuous prose.”
Namita Gokhale, the chair of judges for the prize, said in a statement, “Zaher brings complexity and intensity to the page through her elegantly concise writing: The Coin is a borderless novel, tackling trauma and grief with bold and poetic moments of quirkiness and humour. It fizzes with electric energy. Yasmin Zaher is an extraordinary winner to mark twenty years of this vital prize.”
The other finalists for the award were The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden; Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon; Rapture’s Road by Seán Hewitt; Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good by Eley Williams; and I Will Crash by Rebecca Watson.
The Dylan Thomas Prize, named after the legendary Welsh poet and playwright, was established in 2006 by Swansea University in Wales. Previous winners include Maggie Shipstead for Seating Arrangements, Max Porter for Grief Is the Thing With Feathers, and Arinze Ifeakandu for God’s Children Are Little Broken Things.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
