In our second book review of June, reviewer Florencia Ruiz Mendoza turns to Semezdin Mehmedinović’s newly translated novel, My Heart, published by Catapult in March of this year. Ruiz Mendoza writes that “Mehmedinović’s writing is an odyssey that connects the deepest chambers of the intellect and the soul.” Dive into the review below:
Good literature is always universal. My Heart is Semezdin Mehmedinović’s new novel published in English and translated from the Bosnian by Celia Hawkesworth. My Heart is an autobiographical account that reflects the polyhedral nature of America, and one of its infinite faces. Mehmedinović switches back and forward between the years of his exile in Washington D.C. (where he also worked as journalist) and his life back in Sarajevo during and before the war. He has that unique talent of swinging harmoniously between those worlds permeated by pain and melancholy. It is a pleasure to discover his brilliant thoughts in every attempt to comprehend and amalgamate that capsized and ruptured world in the same paragraph.
