YOU EXIST TOO MUCHZaina ArafatHachetteREVIEWED BY PETER STUPPLESThe narrator of Zaina Arafat’s novel relates the story of her ‘coming of age’ from the vantage of the present, when she is a middle-aged woman at last leading a settled life with her partner, Anouk, in New York. She was born in Neblus, Palestine to a beautiful, well-educated mother from a distinguished family and cardiac-surgeon father. Her parents, like her grandparents, were always quarrelling and separated when she was a young teenager. As a teenager, the narrator, early and vigorously, participates in sexual activity with both boys/men, but especially girls/women. This only accelerates the narrator’s promiscuity, her drinking and clubbing playing havoc with her college education and graduate school programme.

Source: Otago Daily Times May 12, 2021 02:26 UTC