Heart Lamp: Winner of the 2025 International Booker Prize: Selected Stories - Softcover

Mushtaq, Banu

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1916751164 ISBN 13: 9781916751163

Publisher: And Other Stories, 2025

Synopsis

Winner of the 2025 International Booker Prize

A PEN Translates Award winner

In the twelve stories of Heart Lamp, Banu Mushtaq exquisitely captures the everyday lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India. Praised for their dry and gentle humour, these portraits of family and community tensions have garnered both censure from conservative quarters as well India’s most prestigious literary awards.

‘A significant presence in Kannada literature, Banu Mushtaq reveals the varied realities of contemporary women with rare talent and art. Deepa Bhasthi’s rich translation captures the original’s nuances of voice, context and experience, bringing this important work into English for new readers in India and internationally.’ PEN Presents Selection Panel

About this title

About the Authors

Banu Mushtaq is a writer, activist and lawyer in the state of Karnataka, southern India. Mushtaq began writing within the progressive protest literary circles in southwestern India in the 1970s and 1980s: critical of the caste and class system, the Bandaya Sahitya movement gave rise to influential Dalit and Muslim writers, of whom Mushtaq was one of the few women. She is the author of six short story collections, a novel, an essay collection and a poetry collection. She writes in Kannada and has won major awards for her literary works, including the Karnataka Sahitya Academy and the Daana Chintamani Attimabbe awards. Previously translated into Urdu, Hindi, Tamil and Malayalam, the first book-length translation of her work into English will be Heart Lamp: Selected Stories, to be published in 2025, while one of the stories from Heart Lamp has been published in the Paris Review.

Deepa Bhasthi is a writer and literary translator based in Kodagu, southern India. She translates from Kannada and also publishes essays and cultural criticism.

From the Back Cover

In Heart Lamp, Banu Mushtaq exquisitely captures the everyday lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India. Praised for their dry and gentle humour, these portraits of family and community tensions have garnered both censure from conservative quarters as well India's most prestigious literary awards.

Edition details

• Publisher: And Other Stories
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1916751164
• ISBN 13: 9781916751163
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192