And The Heart Was Mine

By Sara Ehnholm Hielm

Publisher, film critic and a voracious reader; wife and middle-aged mother of four. And a chance – a year in Rome! – to put her voice forward to be heard. An intense, intelligent and sensual book about the desire to read and write, and to live. On the first day of a new year, Sara Ehnholm Hielm moves to Italy with her family. The year in Rome is reserved for writing; for finally writing a book of her own. These exquisitely written, high-spirited and brutally honest texts draw a portrait of a woman who has been working with other people’s writing throughout her career; who can’t resist her own urge to write. Nor stop questioning her right to do so. Struggling with the fragility of the process, she is trying to avoid the horror of not being able to complete her project. She takes inspiration from the books she reads as a respite to writing: Elena Ferrante, Karl Ove Knausgård, Chris Kraus and Lena Andersson. It is all about trying to make a dream come true; about finally saying it all, expressing all the feelings from the bottom of the heart.   “A wild, intense and extravagant collection of texts that describe the desire to write from one’s contours of a human being. The many brilliant wordings makes the reader want to underline.” – SWEDISH YLE  

Publishing information

Awards & nominations

About the author

Sara Ehnholm Hielm (b. 1968) is a publisher and film critic, living in Helsinki. She has worked as a fiction editor for fifteen years and has also written plays for stage. She was awarded the Swedish Yle Literature Prize in 2018 for her essay collection And the Heart Was Mine. “Defies the ancient call for female silence,” said the prize jury’s motivation.  Hielm’s other essay collection, How I Went to the Cinema and Never Came Home, was recognized as outstanding work by the Swedish Literature Society in 2023.