Indian author Banu Mushtaq has won this year's International Booker Prize 2025 for her extraordinary short story anthology, Heart Lamp. This is the first literary work in the Kannada language to win the prestigious prize.
The stories were translated into English by Deepa Bhasthi. The anthology is a compilation of 12 short stories, which depict the everyday lives of women and girls from the Muslim community in the southern states. Karnataka-based Mushtaq was one of the three shortlisted authors to present their debut English-language publications.
What Is The Heart Lamp Book About?
“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,” she told The Booker Prize in an interview.
Mushtaq is not just a writer but also an activist and lawyer from Karnataka. While she is being celebrated for her award-winning literary work ‘Heart Lamp', her literary creations also include a novel, an essay collection and a poetry book.
Heart Lamp is Mushtaq's first work to be translated into English. It's also available in Urdu, Hindi, Tamil and Malayalam. During the shortlisting announcement, the Booker Prize panel described ‘Heart Lamp' as exploring the lives of those on the periphery of society, with stories that have a lot of emotional and moral weight.
Who Is Banu Mushtaq: Her Early Life
Mushtaq has also won the Karnataka Sahitya Academy Award. Her work captures the lives of Muslim women in south India, a world she experienced herself. Supported by her father, Mushtaq took admission into a convent school at the age of eight, where the medium of teaching was Kannada, according to BBC.
She married a man of her choice at the age of 26, but her early years of marriage were marked by conflict and emotional turmoil. The 77-year-old writer has also shared publicly about her postpartum depression at the age of 29.
In an earlier interview with The Week, she also confided about how her confined life within the four walls of domestic duties led her to a suicide attempt.
"Once, in a fit of despair, I poured white petrol on myself, intending to set myself on fire. Thankfully, he [the husband] sensed it in time, hugged me, and took away the matchbox. He pleaded with me, placing our baby at my feet saying, 'Don't abandon us'," she told the magazine.
In ‘Heart Lamp', her female characters mirror this spirit of resistance and resilience.
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