Heart Lamp

selected stories: winner of the International Booker Prize 2025
Banu Mushtaq (trans. Deepa Bhasthi)

‘Exploring the lives of those often on the periphery of society, these vivid stories hold immense emotional and moral weight … Heart Lamp returns us to the true, great pleasures of reading: solid storytelling, unforgettable characters, vivid dialogue, tensions simmering under the surface, and a surprise at each turn.’

Judges’ citation from the 2025 International Booker Prize

‘Mushtaq makes her English-language debut with this virtuosic collection … The stories are united by a keen eye for the interplay between their characters’ social circumstances and inner lives, as religious authority and economic class exert their influence. It’s an excellent introduction to an author of rare talent.’

Publishers Weekly, starred review

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‘These twelve stories, selected by her translator Deepa Bhasthi, offer affecting portraits of family and community. Specifically, they illuminate the lives of Muslim and Dalit women and children in southern India … Mushtaq’s compassion and dark humour give texture to her stories. These deceptively simple tales decry the subjugation of women while celebrating their resilience. Bhasthi’s nuanced translation retains several Kannada, Urdu, and Arabic words, eloquently conveying the language’s enduring tradition of oral storytelling.’

Lucy Popescu, Financial Times

‘Bhasthi provides us a glimpse into Mushtaq’s code-switching in her translator’s note and through her superb translation … [The] final story, “Be a Woman Once, Oh Lord!” is written as an everywoman’s plea to God … Her account, she says, has been “written from the heart, a woman’s heart, a string of letters written with the heart’s sharp nib and the red ink inside” — a fitting description for Heart Lamp as a whole as Mushtaq and Bhasthi evoke and illuminate the inner worlds of women.’

Areeb Ahmad, Words Without Borders

‘A significant presence in Kannada literature, Banu Mushtaq reveals the varied realities of contemporary women with rare talent and art. Deepa Bhasthi’s rich translation captures the original’s nuances of voice, context and experience, bringing this important work into English for new readers in India and internationally.’

Pen Presents selection panel

‘The critical acclaim of Heart Lamp is deserved; Mushtaq is — and has been for decades — a writer with a noticeably powerful and profound voice. The potential recognition of her stories through the Bhasti’s translation of Heart Lamp will introduce her stories, already beloved in Kannada, to a wider and diversified audience.’

Mahika Dhar, Asian Review of Books

‘In each story, Mushtaq builds the tension before it becomes unbearable for her characters and readers. The women are aware that there’s something missing in their lives, though they are not fully aware of the extent of their subjugation.’

Sayari Debnath, Scroll.in

‘With a tender heart and a sharp eye for nuance, Banu Mushtaq pens stories with deep contextual understanding of patriarchal institutions and with sympathy to the modern realities of contemporary Muslim women.’

Joshua Jones, author of Local Fires and A Haunting Without Allegory

‘Exploring the gorgeous chorus of voices that make up Heart Lamp feels a little like stepping into an unknown pair of shoes. We can experience where the other wearer might have felt a pinching sense of restriction, the little scuffs and imperfections their day-to-day life has caused, the spaces where comfort can be found. Profound, heart-wrenching, and insightful, this should be on everyone's reading list for 2025.’

Megan Stevenson, Waterstones Newcastle

‘This excellent collection of short stories by the writer, activist, and lawyer Banu Mushtaq depicts the ordinary lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India. Particular highlights for me included the opening story to the collection, “Stone Slabs for Shaista Mahal’, exploring the disposable nature of wifedom under patriarchy, and “A Decision of the Heart”, in which a man decides to marry off his widowed mother. Deepa Bhasthi’s translator’s note, in which she delves into the process of translating from the Kannada language, offers some interesting insights into how language structures everyday relationships, too.’

Rhian Sasseen, Phrase Books

‘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.’

Max Porter, Chair of International Booker Prize 2025 judges

WINNER OF THE 2025 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE

In the twelve stories of Heart Lamp, Banu Mushtaq exquisitely captures the everyday lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India. Published originally in the Kannada language between 1990 and 2023, praised for their dry and gentle humour, these portraits of family and community tensions testify to Mushtaq’s years as a journalist and lawyer, in which she tirelessly championed women’s rights and protested all forms of caste and religious oppression.

Written in a style at once witty, vivid, colloquial, moving and excoriating, it’s in her characters — the sparky children, the audacious grandmothers, the buffoonish maulvis and thug brothers, the oft-hapless husbands, and the mothers above all, surviving their feelings at great cost — that Mushtaq emerges as an astonishing writer and observer of human nature, building disconcerting emotional heights out of a rich spoken style. Her opus has garnered both censure from conservative quarters as well as India’s most prestigious literary awards; this is a collection sure to be read for years to come.

Judges’ citation from the 2025 International Booker Prize

Publishers Weekly, starred review

View all reviews

Lucy Popescu, Financial Times

Areeb Ahmad, Words Without Borders

Pen Presents selection panel

Mahika Dhar, Asian Review of Books

Sayari Debnath, Scroll.in

Joshua Jones, author of Local Fires and A Haunting Without Allegory

Megan Stevenson, Waterstones Newcastle

Rhian Sasseen, Phrase Books

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Details

Format:Paperback

Size: 210mm × 135mm

Extent:224pp

ISBN (13):9781761381836

RRP:$29.99

Pub date:20 May 2025

Rights Held: ANZ

High-res cover:Download Image

AWARDS

2025 The International Booker Prize - Winner

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AUTHOR

Banu Mushtaq

Banu Mushtaq is a writer, activist, and lawyer in the state of Karnataka, southern India. Mushtaq began writing within the progressive protest literary circles in southwestern India in the 1970s and 1980s: critical of the caste and class system, the Bandaya Sahitya movement gave rise to influential Dalit and Muslim writers, of whom Mushtaq was one of the few women. She is the author of six short story collections, a novel, an essay collection and a poetry collection. She writes in Kannada and has won major awards for her literary works, including the Karnataka Sahitya Academy and the Daana Chintamani Attimabbe awards.

TRANSLATOR

Deepa Bhasthi

Deepa Bhasthi is a writer and literary translator based in Kodagu, southern India. Her columns, essays, and cultural criticism have been published in India and internationally. Her published translations from Kannada include a novel by Kota Shivarama Karanth and a collection of short stories by Kodagina Gouramma. Her translation of Banu Mushtaq’s stories was a winner of English PEN’s PEN Translates award.

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Heart Lamp

selected stories: winner of the International Booker Prize 2025
Banu Mushtaq (trans. Deepa Bhasthi)

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selected stories: winner of the International Booker Prize 2025 Banu Mushtaq (trans. Deepa Bhasthi)

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selected stories: winner of the International Booker Prize 2025
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