Literature enthusiasts across India woke up on Wednesday morning to the sweet news of Karnataka’s own Banu Mushtaq and Deepa Bhasthi winning The International Booker Prize, awarded to translated works into English. This was a landmark moment for Kannada literature, with Heart Lamp becoming the first Kannada language work to be recognised by the prestigious award. It was also notable for the fact that this marks the first time a collection of short stories has been awarded. A set of 12 short stories, they are based on the lives of Muslim women in South India, and was compiled by Bhasthi from Mushtaq’s literary output spanning decades. In conversation with CE when the longlist was announced, Mushtaq shared that her work was deeply inspired by the stories of women she worked with as a prominent lawyer and activist.
Banu, who talks about social justice, who talks for the people, who talks for the marginalised, getting recognised at this point in history is very important. Right from the beginning, she has been one of the finest writers and poets in Kannada, and I respect her deeply. One thing to keep in mind is that Banu is not a person who writes only about Muslim women; she writes about concerns. She should never be branded a ‘writer about Muslim women’. Banu is a writer, lawyer, activist, and, as a kind human being, all of these come into her stories. She is an artiste who thinks differently. I was keeping my fingers crossed, but I had a sixth sense that she would win because in the historical and socio-political time that we are living in, a genuine award must come to Banu. She started writing so long ago, but has gotten the limelight only recently, and it is long due!
Heart Lamp is a fine collection – I have followed Banu Mushtaq’s work over the years and am glad to see some well-known stories in this book. No one who reads Banu would say that Kannada women writers can only write about the kitchen. This used to be a commonplace belief held by male critics even as late as the 1990s. Banu’s characters, although mostly from a Muslim setting, are as diverse as the narratives are. The women characters are particularly compelling and memorable. Deepa Bhasthi’s fluent translation brings to life the vivid stories of Heart Lamp. She has done a wonderful job of identifying the right stories and carefully manoeuvring them into English. This is a moment to be acclaimed and cherished. Visibility beyond the national space will help both the language and other Kannada writers attract more readerly attention
Banu Mushtaq’s writing, all along, aspires for social domesticity and dignity. It is about the simultaneous struggle of an individual for gender, linguistic, and ethnic identities in civil society. This will certainly widen the antennae of global readership. It is a heartwarming moment.
This is a personal victory for Banu Mushtaq and Deepa Bhasthi, but it is also very significant for breaking the glass ceiling for Kannada women’s literature. Of the eight Jnanpith awards that came to Kannada, women writers were often openly judged for not being ‘good enough’ to win a Jnanpith, and there was a recent attempt to silence women’s freedom of expression by trolling women poets most obscenely. Banu Mushtaq’s global recognition has come as a final nail in the coffin of trolls. Secondly, it cannot be denied that this is the recognition of the voice of Muslim women. Banu Mushtaq’s global victory, in the current political dilemma in which a prominent Muslim professor gets arrested for writing on social media that ‘optics must translate to reality on the ground’, to show respect and recognition for women, comes as not just a personal victory but a win for a community.
It’s a great honour to the Kannada language and literature, particularly Kannada women’s writing. Banu Mushtaq is a daring and progressive writer who has focused on women’s issues. I am glad that the genre of short fiction has got the respect it deserves. The best fiction is no less great than novels. Are Pushkin and Singer any less than Tolstoy or Dostoevsky?
For Banu Mushtaq, writing is a powerful tool of social dissent. True to the manifesto of the protest movement, which proclaimed, ‘May poetry be a sword, a soulmate who feels for the pain of the people’, Banu, the progressive writer, transmutes her felt experience into heart-rending, humane narratives. Mushtaq’s writing is more relevant than ever before in a world in which the religious divide between communities is growing deeper by the day. Her stories have the potential to build bridges across communities and help us see our deep-seated prejudices, awakening our common humanity. Deepa Bhasthi’s choice of stories showcases Mushtaq’s writing at its best. The translation has ably captured the rhythms and movements of Mushtaq’s life-world to lend a powerful voice to her characters in English as well. This is indeed a historic moment for Kannada. Despite its long and unbroken history of great literature for over 1,500 years, Kannada has not received adequate representation in the national and international arena because of a paucity of good translations. International recognition will provide a necessary fillip in further boosting the translation of good literature from Kannada. Further, Bhasthi, has developed a spare, down style of English and forged an informal and intimate English to express the emergent Kannada sensibility of a new age. Such awards are bound to encourage translators to boldly experiment with new and creative ways of translating.
This is a moment of celebration. If you look at the total Booker awards for India, we have received it six times, and four have come to women writers. This is very interesting – that Indian woman’s writing is telling some truth, which we are not internally recognising, but the outside world is. I have read Banu Mushtaq’s stories extensively because she is undoubtedly one of the most important writers in Kannada today. While there have been many Muslim writers, particularly men, they haven’t looked at religion critically. A true activist, whether they are Hindu, Muslim, Jain, or any other religion, should have the courage to look at their religion or caste with critical eyes. This is a great act of activism which she has done – she has been both vocal in her writing and otherwise.
If I may borrow a phrase from my own language, ‘this moment feels like a thousand fireflies lighting up a single sky – brief, brilliant and utterly collective.’ This is not just a personal achievement but an affirmation that we as individuals and as a global community can thrive when we embrace diversity. This book is my love letter to the idea that no story is local – an idea born under a banyan tree in my village cast shadows as far as this stage tonight. To every reader who journeyed with me, you have made my Kannada language a shared home. It is a language that sings of resilience and nuance. To write in Kannada is to inherit a legacy of cosmic wonder and earthly wisdom.”
Te story of the world is a history of erasures, characterised by the effacement of women’s triumphs and the furtive erasure of collective memories of how women and those on the margins of this world live and love. This prize is a small victory in the ongoing battle against such violences. ‘Jenina holeyo, haalina maleyo, sudheyo Kannada savinudiyo,’ goes a song in Kannada. It calls the language a river of honey, a rain of milk, comparing it to ambrosia. Kannada is one of the oldest languages on earth and I’m ecstatic that this will hopefully lead to a greater interest in reading, writing and translating from the language and by extension, translating from and into the magical languages in South Asia.”
The winners receive a monetary prize of £50,000 (approx ₹57 lakh) split equally between writer and translator. In a statement by Max Porter, The International Booker Prize 2025 chair of judges, he praised Heart Lamp as being ‘something genuinely new for English readers’, adding that it was a ‘radical translation which ruffles language to create new textures in a plurality of Englishes.’ He also said, “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…This was the book the judges really loved, right from our first reading.”