Vikas Meshram
Indian writer, lawyer, and social activist Banu Mushtaq has been awarded the International Booker Prize for 2025. She received this prestigious recognition for her Kannada short story collection “Heart Lamp”. The award also includes Deepa Bhasthi, who translated the book from Kannada to English. This marks the first time a Kannada book has received the esteemed International Booker Prize, and it is also the first short story collection to achieve this honor.
The anthology features 12 short stories written by Banu Mushtaq between 1990 and 2023. These stories primarily highlight the lives of Muslim and Dalit communities in South India, especially focusing on the struggles, social inequality, patriarchy, and caste-based injustice faced by women, all portrayed with emotional depth and sincerity.
At the award ceremony, jury chair and author Max Porter described “Heart Lamp” as “a bold, beautiful, and deeply human tapestry.” He further added that the book offers “an introspective glimpse into lives and worlds rarely seen in English literature.”
Banu Mushtaq was born in 1948 in the Hassan district of Karnataka. She began her writing career through the Bandaya literary movement, which focused on social justice and women’s rights. She has published six short story collections, one novel, one essay collection, and a poetry anthology. Her stories have been translated into multiple languages, and “Heart Lamp” is her first fully translated collection in English.
She becomes the second Indian woman writer to win the International Booker Prize. Earlier, in 2022, Geetanjali Shree won the award for her Hindi novel “Tomb of Sand”. “Heart Lamp” has been published by And Other Stories, an independent UK-based publishing house. This recognition is expected to open new avenues for the global translation and appreciation of Kannada and other Indian language literature.
One excerpt from the story “Heart Deepa” in the collection tells the tale of Mehrun, a mother of three. After reaching the limit of her endurance, her husband marries another woman, leading her to decide to end her life. Her heart had long been extinguished. She pours kerosene over herself and is about to light the lamp when her daughter Salima arrives with her younger sister and begs her not to orphan them. This moving scene forms part of the Booker-winning collection originally written in Kannada and translated by Deepa Bhasthi. This is the first time a Kannada author has won the award, and notably, both the author and translator come from rural Kannada backgrounds. It’s also the first time a short story collection has received this accolade.
Nearly all of Mushtaq’s stories are rooted in rural settings, portraying the plight of women—especially Muslim women. In another story titled Block Cobra, Ashraf’s husband abandons her and their children. She seeks help from the local mosque’s mutawalli (caretaker), but receives none. Feeling helpless, Ashraf becomes desperate. In a symbolic act, some village women metaphorically spit venom like cobras at the mutawalli. As he returns home, a woman throws a stone at him and shouts, while another curses him to be bitten by a black snake. When he reaches home, his wife physically assaults him.
Mushtaq hails from a small village in Karnataka. During her childhood, her father, a government employee, enrolled her in a madrasa like other local girls to study Urdu. She married a Muslim man of her choice, unaware of the restrictive environment of his household. After giving birth to a daughter, Mushtaq felt increasingly suffocated. Determined to give her children quality education, she enrolled them in a nearby convent school that also taught Kannada.
Mushtaq had a deep interest in writing from an early age. Her stories and articles were published in local Kannada magazines during her student years. Though her parents wished to marry her off early, she resisted and eventually married at the age of 26. Later, following a conflict, she decided to end her life by pouring kerosene on herself. Just as she was about to light the match, her husband intervened, bringing their young daughter and pleading with her not to go through with it. He promised to let her live life on her own terms. This moment marked her return to writing. She began working as a reporter for a local magazine and wrote extensively about the dire condition of women—especially Muslim women—in a patriarchal society.
In the 1970s and 80s, Karnataka witnessed the rise of the Bandaya (rebellion) literary movement against elite dominance in literature, in which Mushtaq played an active role. She has published a total of six poetry collections, a compilation of essays, and a novel.
Her husband could not accompany her to the award ceremony in England, so she took her daughter in his place. The International Booker Prize includes a cash reward of $50,000, of which half goes to the translator in the case of translated works.
C. Countercurrents
