The moment Max Poter, chair of judges for the 2025 International Booker Prize, said, 'Our winning book shifts our perspective, teaches us to listen, and gives voice to the voiceless,' a die was cast."
It was clear to the audience at London’s Tate Modern and the hundreds watching via Instagram livestream that the winner was Banu Mushtaq’s Heart Lamp, a collection of her fearless Kannada short stories, translated by Deepa Bhasthi.
The collection features 12 short stories written between 1990 and 2023, revolving around the lives of ordinary girls and women in South India’s Muslim communities. It paints a vivid picture of familial and communal tensions. Readers may be familiar with the story Black Cobras or Kari Nagaragalu, which was adapted into the film Hasina by Girish Kasaravalli.
With this win, it became the first Kannada title and the first collection of short stories to win The International Booker Prize. The prize comes with a £50,000 cash reward, split equally between the writer and the translator.
"This moment feels like a thousand fireflies lighting up a single sky," said Banu Mushtaq, accepting her long-deserved award.
She added, "This story is a love letter to my belief that no story is local, that a tale born under the banyan tree in my village can cast a shadow as far as this stage tonight… You have made my Kannada language a shared home, a language that sings of resilience and nuance. To write in Kannada is to inherit a legacy of cosmic wonder."
The author, an outspoken activist and lawyer, reflected on her journey of writing stories inspired by the women she encounters every day in her line of work. In an interview with The New Indian Express after the longlist was announced, she recalled a particularly challenging moment in her journey, “I have also been punished for my views, values, and convictions. There were fatwas issued against me and an order of excommunication because I stated that women are allowed to enter mosques, and in the Quran, they are not restricted. Some fanatics were offended by this.”
Deepa Bhasthi, who has previously won the prestigious English PEN’s PEN Translates award, said, “The story of the world is a history of erasures, characterized by the effacement of women's triumphs and the furtive erasure of collective memories of how women and those on the margins of society live and love. This prize is a small victory in the ongoing battle against such violences.”
The book was called “something genuinely new for English readers” by Porter, who went on to state that it is “a radical translation that ruffles language to create new textures in a plurality of Englishes. It challenges and expands our understanding of translation.”