WRITER, activist and lawyer Banu Mushtaq’s short story collection ‘Heart Lamp’ has become the first Kannada title to win the coveted GBP 50,000 International Booker Prize in London. Mushtaq described her win as a victory for diversity as she collected the prize on Tuesday night at a ceremony at Tate Modern along with her translator Deepa Bhasthi, who translated the title from Kannada to English.

 

The winning collection of 12 short stories chronicles the resilience, resistance, wit, and sisterhood of everyday women in patriarchal communities in southern India, vividly brought to life through a rich tradition of oral storytelling. Shortlisted among six worldwide titles, Mushtaq’s work appealed to the judges for its “witty, vivid, colloquial, moving and excoriating” style of capturing portraits of family and community tensions. “This book was born from the belief that no story is ever small, that in the tapestry of human experience every thread holds the weight of the whole,” said Mushtaq. “In a world that often tries to divide us, literature remains one of the lost sacred spaces where we can live inside each other’s minds, if only for a few pages,” she said.

 

Translator Bhashti added: “What a beautiful win this is for my beautiful language.” Max Porter, International Booker Prize 2025 Chair of judges, described the winning titleassomethinggenuinelynew for English readers. “A radical translation which ruffles language,to create new textures in a plurality of Englishes. It challenges and expands our understandingoftranslation,”hesaid. “Thiswasthebookthejudges 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 thrilledtosharethistimelyand exciting winner of the International Booker Prize 2025 with readers around the world,” he said. The tales in‘Heart Lamp’,the first collection of short stories to win the prize, were written byMushtaqoveraperiodofover 30 years, from 1990 to 2023. They were selected and curated by Bhasthi, who was keen to preserve the multilingual nature of southern India.