Point of View

Jan-Philipp Sendker tells his novel “The Art of Hearing Heartbeats” from the first-person, limited omniscient perspective and the third-person, omniscient perspective. The sections of the novel told in the first-person narrative are from the point of view of Julia Win as she seeks to learn the truth about her father’s past and his disappearance. The third-person sections of the novel are told by U Ba. They recount the early and recent history of Julia’s father as was related to U Ba by Tin Win himself.

The first-person sections of the novel give the reader an intimate glimpse into the reactions, thoughts, feelings, and emotional distress Julia endures as she learns about the past. The third-person narrative allows the reader to learn the facts of Tin Win’s early life as Julia learns them.

The weaving of both narrative modes helps to transition the...