"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 Mehmedinović 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.

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
Refinery29, A Best New Book of the Year
Literary Hub, A Most Anticipated Book of the Year
A Book Riot Must-Read Book in Translation

"Semezdin Memedinović charts the collapse of a world with heartbreaking clarity and precision... conveys the same clear-eyed passion for the truth that one finds in the young Hemingway, the Hemingway of our time." —Paul Auster

"Though it deals with tragedy, My Heart is never depressing, partly because of the beauty of the language—expertly translated from the Bosnian by Celia Hawkesworth—and partly because of its depth and honesty of emotion, its intelligence and generosity of spirit, and the precision and originality of Mehmedinovic’s observations . . . [A] powerful, at once profound and charming book." ––Francine Prose, The New York Times Book Review

"My Heart deserves to be read widely, and closely. Each sentence is smooth and precise, cerebral but never grandiose. In Mehmedinović’s novel, life and death emerge most vibrantly alongside one another." ––CJ Green, Zyzzyva