Heart Lamp by Indian author Banu Mushtaq, translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi, has won the International Booker Prize, the world’s most influential award for translated fiction.
The winning book, the first collection of short stories to be awarded the prize, was announced by author Max Porter, chair of the 2025 judges, at a ceremony in London’s Tate Modern. The prize recognises the vital work of translation, with the £50,000 prize money divided equally between author and translator.
The winning collection of 12 short stories chronicles the resilience, resistance, wit and sisterhood of women in patriarchal communities in southern India, vividly brought to life through a rich tradition of oral storytelling. From tough, stoic mothers to opinionated grandmothers, from cruel husbands to resilient children, the female characters in the stories endure great inequities and hardships but remain defiant.
Mushtaq, a lawyer and leading voice within progressive Kannada literature, is a prominent champion of women’s rights and a protester against caste and religious oppression in India, and was inspired to write the stories by the experiences of women who came to her seeking help.
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The stories in Heart Lamp, which is the first winner of the International Booker Prize to be translated from Kannada, spoken by an estimated 65 million people, 38 million as a first language, were written by Mushtaq over more than 30 years, from 1990 to 2023. They were selected and curated by Bhasthi, who was keen to preserve the multi-lingual nature of southern India. When the characters use Urdu or Arabic words in conversation, these are left in the original, reproducing the unique rhythms of spoken language.
"Heart Lamp is something genuinely new for English readers," Porter said. “A radical translation which ruffles language, to create new textures in a plurality of Englishes. 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. It speaks of women’s lives, reproductive rights, faith, caste, power and oppression. This was the book the judges really loved, right from our first reading.”
Fiammetta Rocco, prize administrator, said: "Heart Lamp, stories written by a great advocate of women’s rights over three decades and translated with sympathy and ingenuity, should be read by men and women all over the world. The book speaks to our times, and to the ways in which many are silenced.
“In a divided world, a younger generation is increasingly connecting with global stories that have been skilfully reworked for English-language readers through the art of translation. Since 2016, the International Booker Prize has promoted the world’s best writing in translation.”
The winning book was chosen by Porter, prize-winning poet, director and photographer Caleb Femi; writer and publishing director of Wasafiri Sana Goyal; author and translator Anton Hur; and singer-songwriter Beth Orton.
Both Mushtaq and Bhasthi were nominated for the International Booker Prize for the first time this year and Heart Lamp is Mushtaq’s first English-language publication. Mushtaq is the second Indian author to win the prize, and follows Geetanjali Shree who won in 2022 for Tomb of Sand, translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell. Bhasthi is the first Indian translator to win the prize. Mushtaq is the sixth female author, with Bhasthi the ninth female translator, to be awarded the prize since it took on its current form in 2016.
At just over 200 pages long, Heart Lamp was the second longest book on a shortlist of slim books: four of the six shortlisted works are under 200 pages long, with Under the Eye of the Big Bird the longest, at 278 pages.
This is the first International Booker Prize win for Sheffield-based independent publisher And Other Stories, though their sixth nomination for the prize.
“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," Mushtaq said. “The daily incidents reported in 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, compelling me to write.
“Stories for the Heart Lamp collection were chosen from around 50 stories in six story collections I wrote between 1990 and later. Usually, there will be a single draft, and the second one will be a final copy. I do not engage in extensive research; my heart itself is my field of study. The more intensely the incidents affect me, the more deeply and emotionally I write.”
Bhasti said: “For me, translation is an instinctive practice in many ways, and I have found that 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.
“I was very conscious of the fact that I knew very little about the community she places her stories in. Thus, during the period I was working on the first draft, I found myself immersed in the very addictive world of Pakistani television dramas, music by old favourites like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Ali Sethi, Arooj Aftab and others, and I even took classes to learn the Urdu script. I suppose these things somehow helped me get under the skin of the stories and the language she uses.
“When one translates, the aim is to introduce the reader to new words, in this case, Kannada (...) I call it translating with an accent, which reminds the reader that they are reading a work set in another culture, without exoticising it, of course. So the English in Heart Lamp is an English with a very deliberate Kannada hum to it."
