“A radical translation which ruffles language, to create new textures in a plurality of Englishes. It challenges and expands our understanding of translation.”
This is how writer Max Porter, International Booker Prize 2025 Chair of Judges, described ‘Heart Lamp’ – Banu Mushtaq’s short story collection translated into English by Deepa Bhasthi – as it made history this week as the first Kannada language title to list the prestigious £50,000 literary award.
Porter added: “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.”
Mushtaq and Bhasthi lifted the trophies at a glittering awards ceremony in London, highlighting the milestone it sets for Indian and Kannada literature.
Mushtaq described her winning work, a labour of love written over 30 years, as her “love letter to the idea that no story is local or small”.
She said: “This is more than a personal achievement, it is an affirmation that we as individuals and as a global community can thrive when we embrace diversity, celebrate our differences and uplift one another.
“Together, we create a world where every voice is heard, every story matters and every person belongs.”
Bhasthi added: "The story of the world if you think about it is a history of erasures, it is characterised by the effacement of women's triumph and the furtive rubbing away of collective memory of how women and those on many margins of this world live and love. This prize is a small win in a long ongoing battle against such violences.”
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Their winning collection of 12 short stories chronicles the resilience, resistance, wit, and sisterhood of everyday women in patriarchal communities in southern India, vividly brought to life through a rich tradition of oral storytelling. From tough, stoic mothers to opinionated grandmothers, from cruel husbands to resilient children, the female characters in the stories endure great inequities and hardships but remain defiant. Mushtaq was inspired to write the stories between 1990 and 2023 by the experiences of women who came to her seeking help.
It now takes its place as the second Indian title to win the prize after Geetanjali Shree’s ‘Tomb of Sand’, making Bhasthi the first Indian translator to lift the trophy. The win also spotlights Kannada – spoken by an estimated 65 million people from southern India, with around 38 million calling it their first language.
