Heart Lamp: Selected Stories

Winner of the 2025 International Booker Prize

In the twelve stories of Heart Lamp, Banu Mushtaq exquisitely captures the everyday lives of women & girls in Muslim communities in southern India. Published originally in the Kannada language between 1990 and 2023, praised for their dry & gentle humour, these portraits of family & community tensions testify to Mushtaq’s years as a journalist & lawyer, in which she tirelessly championed women’s rights & protested all forms of caste & 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 & thug brothers, the oft-hapless husbands, & the mothers above all, surviving their feelings at great cost – that Mushtaq emerges as an astonishing writer & 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 India’s most prestigious literary awards; this is a collection sure to be read for years to come.

andotherstories.org/2025/05/21/banu-mushtaqs-heart-lamp-translated-by-deepa-bhasthi-awarded-the-international-booker-prize-2025/

thebookerprizes.com/media-centre/press-releases/heart-lamp-wins-the-international-booker-prize-2025

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“My stories are about women – how religion, society, & politics demand unquestioning obedience from them, & in doing so, inflict inhumane cruelty upon them, turning them into mere subordinates. The daily incidents reported in media & the personal experiences I have endured have been my inspiration. The pain, suffering, & helpless lives of these women create a deep emotional response within me, compelling me to write.

…Usually, there will be a single draft, & the second one will be a final copy. I do not engage in extensive research; my heart itself is my field of study.” — Booker Prize interview