Phil in SF quoted The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
A profound, startling, and beautifully crafted debut novel, The Sympathizer is the story of a …
Likewise, in the small wad of folded piastres I paid her with, there might or might not be a cartridge of film or a message of my own, written invisibly with with rice water on cement paper.
— The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (57%)
new vocabulary: piastres
a monetary unit of several Middle Eastern countries, equal to one 100th of a pound