Herzenstimmen

Almost ten years have passed since Julia Win returned from Burma, the homeland of her father, in Jan-Philipp Sendker's The Art of Hearing Heartbeats. She is now a successful Manhattan attorney, but her private life is unraveling: her relationship has ended, and despite her professional success she feels adrift. Then, in the middle of a business meeting, she hears a stranger's voice in her head — a woman's voice that refuses to go away, and that keeps asking her questions she has spent years avoiding.

A Burmese monk tells her that another woman's soul has become entangled with her own, and Julia sets off once again for Burma. There she finds U Ba, who takes her to an elderly woman named Khin Khin — the half-sister of Nu Nu, the woman whose voice has been haunting Julia.

Nu Nu's story unfolds as Burma is engulfed by war: forced to choose which of her two sons to protect from conscription, she saves the one she loves more, dooming his brother, Thar Thar, to be taken as a child soldier at twelve years old. As Julia pieces together Nu Nu's fate, she is forced to confront her own capacity for love, guilt, and forgiveness. Herzenstimmen (published in English as A Well-Tempered Heart) is the second novel in Sendker's Burma trilogy, following Das Herzenhören.