At a prestigious live ceremony held at the Tate Modern in London on May 20, 2025, the International Booker Prize was awarded to Heart Lamp, a collection of short stories by Indian author Banu Mushtaq. This win marked a historic moment as Heart Lamp became the first short story collection ever to receive the renowned literary award, which honors works of fiction translated into English. The £50,000 prize will be equally split between Mushtaq and her translator Deepa Bhasthi, ensuring both receive equal acclaim for their contribution.
This momentous win also places Mushtaq in an exclusive category of Indian writers who have achieved the International Booker Prize. She follows Gitanjali Shree, who won the award in 2022 for her Hindi novel Ret Samadhi, translated into English as Tomb of Sand. However, Mushtaq has set a new benchmark by becoming the first Indian author to win the award with a work originally written in Kannada, a language spoken by approximately 65 million people. The Booker Prize Foundation noted the significance of this milestone. Moreover, Deepa Bhasthi has made her own history by becoming the first Indian translator to win the International Booker Prize.
Chair of the 2025 judging panel, Max Porter, announced the award and praised the book and its translation, saying, “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.”
Porter elaborated on what makes Heart Lamp stand out, noting, “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.”
Describing the judging process, Porter added that the collection quickly became a favorite. “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.”
Banu Mushtaq, a passionate advocate for women’s rights, explained the inspiration behind her stories. “My stories are about women – how religion, society, and politics demand unquestioning obedience from them, and in doing so, inflict inhumane cruelty upon them, turning them into mere subordinates. The daily incidents reported in the media and the personal experiences I have endured have been my inspiration. The pain, suffering, and helpless lives of these women create a deep emotional response within me. I do not engage in extensive research; my heart itself is my field of study,” she said.
Heart Lamp comprises 12 short stories that delve into the everyday struggles and experiences of women and girls living in patriarchal communities in southern India. The Booker Prize Foundation described Mushtaq not only as a writer but also as a lawyer and activist who has fought against caste and religious discrimination. Her stories, which span over three decades, were written in Kannada and published between 1990 and 2023. Despite having begun her literary journey in the 1970s, Heart Lamp is the first full-length English translation of her work.
The foundation praised her writing style, saying, “Mushtaq’s writing is at once witty, vivid, moving and excoriating, building disconcerting emotional heights out of a rich spoken style.” It further highlighted her remarkable character development, stating, “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 she emerges as an astonishing writer and observer of human nature.”
Mushtaq was actively involved in the Bandaya Sahitya movement, a literary initiative that gave voice to marginalized Dalit and Muslim writers. Over the years, she has authored six collections of short stories, a novel, a poetry collection, and a volume of essays. Still, Heart Lamp remains the first full-length work of hers to be translated into English.
The translator of Heart Lamp, Deepa Bhasthi, is a prominent literary translator and writer based in Kodagu, located in southern India. Her work has been featured both in India and internationally through essays, columns, and cultural critiques. She previously translated a novel by Kota Shivarama Karanth and a collection of short stories by Kodagina Gouramma, both originally written in Kannada.
Bhasthi’s work on Heart Lamp received the English PEN’s ‘PEN Translates’ award, a recognition of excellence in literary translation. She described her method of working on Mushtaq’s stories as “translating with an accent.” Speaking about her unique process, Bhasthi said, “For me, translation is an instinctive practice, and each book demands a completely different process. With Banu’s stories, I first read all the fiction she had published before I narrowed it down to the ones that are in Heart Lamp. I was lucky to have a free hand in choosing what stories I wanted to work with, and Banu did not interfere with the organised chaotic way I went about it.”
Her intimate engagement with the author’s broader body of work allowed her to handpick stories that would resonate both culturally and emotionally with a global audience. Bhasthi’s collaborative yet autonomous process highlights the artistic freedom that contributed to the collection’s impact.
Indian authors have a proud history of recognition in Booker awards over the decades. Previous recipients include literary giants such as V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Aravind Adiga, and Kiran Desai. Banu Mushtaq and Deepa Bhasthi now join this illustrious lineage, with their victory signaling not just a personal triumph but a broader celebration of linguistic diversity, cultural representation, and the power of translation in bringing local stories to the world stage.
In celebrating the first short story collection to win the International Booker Prize and the first from the Kannada language, Heart Lamp is not just a milestone for Indian literature, but a turning point for global storytelling. It underscores the value of narratives rooted in regional realities and told in native tongues, made universally accessible through the skillful art of translation.