Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Jan 2012
336 pages
Genre: Romance
Publication Information
A poignant and inspirational love story set in Burma, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats spans the decades between the 1950s and the present. When a successful New York lawyer suddenly disappears without a trace, neither his wife nor his daughter Julia has any idea where he might be... until they find a love letter he wrote many years ago, to a Burmese woman they have never heard of. Intent on solving the mystery and coming to terms with her father's past, Julia decides to travel to the village where the woman lived. There she uncovers a tale of unimaginable hardship, resilience, and passion that will reaffirm the reader's belief in the power of love to move mountains.
Paperback original
"[The Art of Hearing Heartbeats] is a love story set in Burma… imbued with Eastern spirituality and fairy-tale romanticism… Fans of Nicholas Sparks and/or Elizabeth Gilbert should eat this up." - Kirkus Reviews
"An epic narrative that requires… a large box of tissues." - Publishers Weekly
"Sweetly tragic." - Library Journal
"No matter what I even attempt to say, I can't possibly capture the absolute magic of this book. Like a spell, it haunts. Like love, it's going to endure." - Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You
"A story at once both poignant and joyous, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats reaffirms how love can transform the harshest of realities into a mystical one... Reading this book was like reading poetry, with full attention required for each sentence. A thoroughly immersive and enjoyable read." - Margaret Dilloway, author of How to Be an American Housewife
"Set in Burma, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats is a rare novel... the story of a young blind man's journey through a world of auditory intensity, Jan-Philipp Sendker renews one's faith in the possibility of real, pure love. I finished the book in tears." - Shawna Yang Ryan, author of Water Ghosts
This information about The Art of Hearing Heartbeats was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Frank Suffert
Jan-Philipp Sendker, born in Hamburg in 1960, was the American correspondent for Stern from 1990 to 1995, and its Asian correspondent from 1995 to 1999. In 2000 he published Cracks in the Wall, a nonfiction book about China. The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, his first novel, was an international bestseller. He lives in Berlin with his family.
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