Kannada author Banu Mushtaq's 'Heart Lamp' wins Booker Prize 2025

London, May 21: Writer, activist and lawyer Banu Mushtaq's short story collection 'Heart Lamp' has become the first Kannada title to win the coveted International Booker Prize in London.

Describing her win as a “victory for diversity”, Mushtaq collected the prize on Tuesday night at a ceremony at Tate Modern along with her English translator Deepa Bhasthi.

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. 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," said Mushtaq.

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 title as something genuinely new for English readers. "A radical translation which ruffles language, to create new textures in a plurality of Englishes. It challenges and expands our understanding of translation," he said.

The tales in 'Heart Lamp', the first collection of short stories to win the prize, were written by Mushtaq over a period of over 30 years, from 1990 to 2023.

They were selected and curated by Bhasthi, who was keen to preserve the multilingual 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.

Fiammetta Rocco, Administrator of the International Booker Prize, added, "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."

The annual prize celebrates the best works of long-form fiction or collections of short stories translated into English and published in the UK and/or Ireland between May 2024 and April 2025.

Each shortlisted title is awarded a prize of £ 5,000, shared between the author and translator, and the winning prize money is split between Mushtaq and Bhashti, who receive £ 25,000 each.

It marks the second win for an Indian title since 2022, when Geetanjali Shree and translator Daisy Rockwell won the coveted prize for the first-ever Hindi novel 'Tomb of Sand'. Perumal Murugan's Tamil novel 'Pyre', translated into English by Aniruddhan Vasudevan, made it to the longlist in 2023.

PTI