You Exist Too Much: A Novel

Zaina Arafat

Jun 2020 · Highbridge Audio · Narrated by Zehra Jane Naqvi

About this audiobook

On a hot day in Bethlehem, a twelve-year-old Palestinian-American girl is yelled at by a group of men outside the Church of the Nativity. She has exposed her legs in a biblical city, an act they deem forbidden, and their judgement will echo on through her adolescence. When our narrator finally admits to her mother that she is queer, her mother’s response only intensifies a sense of shame: "You exist too much," she tells her daughter.



Told in vignettes that flash between the US and the Middle East, Zaina Arafat's debut novel traces her protagonist's progress from blushing teen to sought-after DJ and aspiring writer. In Brooklyn, she moves into an apartment with her first serious girlfriend and tries to content herself with their comfortable relationship. But soon her longings, so closely hidden during her teenage years, explode out into reckless romantic encounters. Her desire to thwart her own destructive impulses will eventually lead her to The Ledge, an unconventional treatment center that identifies her affliction as "love addiction." In this strange, enclosed society she will start to consider the unnerving similarities between her own internal traumas and divisions and those of the places that have formed her.



You Exist Too Much is a captivating story charting two of our most intense longings—for love, and a place to call home.

About the author

Zaina Arafat is a Palestinian-American writer. Her stories and essays have appeared in publications including the New York Times, Granta, the Believer, Virginia Quarterly Review, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, BuzzFeed, VICE, and NPR. She grew up between the US and the Middle East and currently lives in Brooklyn. Zehra Jane Naqvi is a full-time voice-over artist, actress, and singer of Anglo/Indian origin. Originally from Australia, Zehra Jane has been based in the U.K. for the past twenty years, where she has enjoyed a successful career spanning stage and screen.