Banu Mushtaq and Deepa Bhasthi Win International Booker Prize 2025 for “Heart Lamp”
In a landmark moment for Indian literature, Banu Mushtaq’s powerful collection of 12 short stories, Heart Lamp, translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi, has won this year’s International Booker Prize, one of the world’s most prestigious literary awards for fiction translated into English.
Announced on Tuesday, the win marks the first time a short story collection has taken the prize since its current format was introduced in 2016. The award, which includes a £50,000 (approximately $66,700) cash prize split equally between the author and the translator, recognizes a single work of fiction translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland over the past year.
Described as “extraordinary accounts of patriarchal systems and resistance,” Heart Lamp spotlights the daily struggles of Indian Muslim women as they navigate societal, familial, and religious pressures. The stories delve into themes of subjugation, resilience, and quiet defiance in a deeply patriarchal setting.
The book triumphed over five other shortlisted titles, including On the Calculation of Volume: 1 by Solvej Balle, translated from Danish by Barbara J. Haveland, and Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, translated from Italian by Sophie Hughes. Despite the critical praise enjoyed by several of the competing titles, Heart Lamp had received relatively little media attention prior to its win. Only one major UK publication, The Financial Times, had reviewed it, with critic Lucy Popescu noting Mushtaq’s “deceptively simple tales decry the subjugation of women while celebrating their resilience.”
Writing in The Times Literary Supplement, Kate McLoughlin called the stories “searing, phantasmagorical, unclassifiable.”
Mushtaq, 77, is a former lawyer, journalist, and activist. Speaking to the Booker Prize website, she said her stories are inspired by “how religion, society and politics demand unquestioning obedience from [women], and in doing so, inflict inhumane cruelty upon them, turning them into subordinates.” She emphasized that her writing comes from lived experiences rather than research. “My heart itself is my field of study,” she said. “The more intensely the incidence affects me, the more deeply and emotionally I write.”
One of the most poignant tales in the collection, the title story “Heart Lamp,” features a woman pleading with her family to let her leave her adulterous husband. When they refuse, she contemplates suicide. In another, “Black Cobras,” a mother appeals to a religious leader for help with her child’s medical bills — only to be ignored.
Reacting to her win, Mushtaq offered a poetic reflection: “It feels like a thousand fireflies lighting up a single sky — brief, brilliant and utterly collective.” She called Heart Lamp “my love letter to the idea that no story is ‘local’ — that a story born under a banyan tree in my village can cast shadows as far as this stage tonight” (Booker Prize website).
With this historic win, Heart Lamp has not only illuminated the lives of its characters but also placed Indian regional literature — particularly from Kannada — on the global literary map in a profound and lasting way.
Congratulations are pouring in from across India especially the Kannada world. Raj B Shetty film director actor and Hombale Films of Kantara, KGF fame congratulated Bhanu Mushtaq and Deepa Bhasin on their historic win.
Here’s what Max Porter, author and chair of the 2025 judging panel said on Why Heart Lamp won the International Booker Prize 2025
‘Heart Lamp is something genuinely new for English readers. A radical translation which ruffles language, to create new textures in a plurality of Englishes. It challenges and expands our understanding of translation.
‘These beautiful, busy, life-affirming stories rise from Kannada, interspersed with the extraordinary socio-political richness of other languages and dialects. It speaks of women’s lives, reproductive rights, faith, caste, power and oppression.
‘This was the book the judges really loved, right from our first reading. It’s been a joy to listen to the evolving appreciation of these stories from the different perspectives of the jury. We are thrilled to share this timely and exciting winner of the International Booker Prize 2025 with readers around the world.’
(Booker Prize Website)
