Synopses & Reviews
“Today, it seems, was the day I was meant to die.” When a writer suffers a heart attack at the age of fifty, he must confront his mortality in a country that is not his native home. Confined to a hospital bed and overcome by a sense of powerlessness, he reflects on the fragility of life and finds extraordinary meaning in the quotidian. In this affecting autobiographical novel, Semezdin Mehmedinovic explores the love he and his family have for one another, strengthened by trauma; their harrowing experience of the Bosnian war, which led them to flee for the United States as refugees; eerie premonitions of Donald Trump’s presidency; the life and work of a writer; and the nature of memory and grief.
Poetically explosive and pure to the core, My Heart serves as a kind of mirror, reflecting our human strengths and weaknesses along with the most important issues on our minds — love and death, the present and the past, sickness and health, leaving and staying.
Review
"Intelligent, honest, and full of heart, Mehmedinović’s novel has all the qualities one might seek in a friend. Like a friend, it is honest enough to tell you even the harshest of truths, and, like a true friend, it ensures that you will never feel alone while you read it, even in its most heartbreaking moments.“ Etgar Keret, author of The Seven Good Years
Review
“My Heart is a family memoir, a personal account, a travelogue, a history, an immigrant story, and more, much more. A brilliant, unforgettable book, concise yet expansive, both microscopic and universal in its scope. It’s a record of the everyday, of the quotidian as informed by our PTSD. An astonishing achievement.” Rabih Alameddine, author of An Unnecessary Woman
Review
“An intimate, yet profound and lyrical portrait of a man and his family... Superbly translated by Celia Hawkesworth, My Heart is an introspective, literary journey worth taking.” Booklist (starred review)
Review
“A powerful autofictional gut punch of a novel... Few books are this good at capturing an immigrant’s sense of loss.” Publishers Weekly (starred review)
About the Author
Semezdin Mehmedinović was born in 1960 in Kiseljak near Tuzla. He studied comparative literature at the Faculty of Philosophy in Sarajevo. A poet and an essayist, Mehmedinović has held the position of an editor in newspapers, weeklies, as well as on the radio and television. He has edited a number of culture magazines and has been involved in the film industry. Sarajevo Blues and Nine Alexandrias have been published among his other works. Since 1996, he has been living in the United States.