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WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2025 In Heart Lamp, Banu Mushtaq offers a powerful and intimate glimpse into the everyday lives of women and girls in Muslim communities across southern India. Originally written in Kannada, these stories shine with emotional honesty and sharp insight, drawn from Mushtaq’s years as a journalist and lawyer passionately advocating for women’s rights and fighting caste and religious injustices. Her writing style is a remarkable blend—witty, vibrant, deeply colloquial, and emotionally stirring. Through unforgettable characters like spirited children, fearless grandmothers, overbearing brothers, hapless husbands, and, most of all, resilient mothers navigating silent heartbreaks, Mushtaq paints a vivid picture of love, resistance, and survival. Heart Lamp is not only a literary triumph but also a bold social document. While it has drawn criticism from conservative circles, it has also earned some of India’s highest literary honors. This collection is destined to become a classic—timeless, fearless, and profoundly human.
Banu Mushtaq is a writer, activist and lawyer from Karnataka, India. Mushtaq began writing within the progressive protest literary circles in southwestern India in the 1970s and 80s. Critical of the caste system, the Bandaya Sahitya movementgave 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 the Karnataka Sahitya Academy and Daana Chintamani Attimabbe awards. Deepa Bhasthi is a writer and literary translator based in Kodagu, southern India. Her columns, essays and cultural criticism have been published in India and internationally. Her published translations from Kannada include a novel by Kota Shivarama Karanth and a collection of short stories by Kodagina Gouramma. Her translation of Banu Mushtaq's stories has won her the English PEN Translates award.
Banu Mushtaq, Deepa BhasthiAdd a review
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