Banu Mushtaq becomes first Kannada writer to be on International Booker shortlist; translated by Deepa Bhasthi, the stories in ‘Heart Lamp’ are centered on Muslim women’s lives in southern India
Kannada writer, activist and lawyer Banu Mushtaq’s short story collection Heart Lamp (Penguin Random House), translated from Kannada into English by Deepa Bhasthi, was on Tuesday shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025 in London. It marks the first time a Kannada title has made it this far in the race for the coveted GBP 50,000 literary prize — divided between author and translator.
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. “Stories about encroaching modernity, as told through the lives of Muslim women in southern India. An invigorating reading experience,” reads the judges’ reason for including it on the shortlist.
‘Translation is an instinctive practice’
The 12 stories, published originally between 1990 and 2023, will now go head-to-head with authors from across the world. “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 in a statement.
“The daily incidents reported in the 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. I do not engage in extensive research; my heart itself is my field of study,” she said.
Also read: Deepa Bhasthi interview: ‘There’s nothing black and white in Banu Mushtaq’s stories’
The book’s translator, Deepa Bhasthi, added: “For me, translation is an instinctive practice, and 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.”
A big moment for Kannada literature
Banu faced a fatwa and threats after writing a bold short story called ‘Be a Woman Once, O Lord,’ in which she asks God to be a woman just once — not to target any religion, but to question the unfair system that lets men mistreat women in its name. But she didn’t stop writing. What makes her writing stand out is how she wraps serious, emotional subjects in subtle humour and sharp insight. In March, when the longlist was announced, Bhasthi had told The Federal in an interview that Mushtaq can talk about heartbreak or violence in a way that feels quietly powerful and deeply human.
To bring these stories into English, Bhasthi fully immersed herself in Mushtaq’s world — she watched Pakistani dramas, listened to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and even learnt Urdu script. She wanted to capture the feel and rhythm of Mushtaq’s language, which blends Kannada with words from Dakhni, Urdu, and Arabic. Instead of smoothing everything out, Bhasthi kept many original Kannada words like anthe and abbabbaa in the translation to keep the flavour alive. Speaking to The Federal, she said she believes translation shouldn’t erase where a story comes from — it should carry that accent proudly. For her, this Booker nomination is not just about the book — it’s a big moment for Kannada literature, which is rarely translated, especially when it comes to women writers. It’s already inspiring young people to rediscover and take pride in their mother tongue.
Also read: Srikar Raghavan interview: ‘Impossible to destroy Karnataka’s richly inclusive legacy’
In a statement, Penguin Random House India said, “This achievement marks a historic moment, with Heart Lamp becoming one of the very few Kannada-language works to be recognised at this level.” Moutushi Mukherjee, Penguin Commissioning Editor who worked on the book, said, “To see Heart Lamp on the International Booker shortlist is an extraordinary affirmation of the power of Indian regional literature and the importance of translation.”
All six books published by indie publishers
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. The other five books shortlisted from the longlist for this year’s prize are: On the Calculation of Volume I by Solvej Balle, translated from Danish by Barbara J. Haveland; Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix, translated from French by Helen Stevenson; Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami, translated from Japanese by Asa Yoneda; Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, translated from Italian by Sophie Hughes; and A Leopard-Skin Hat by Anne Serre, translated from French by Mark Hutchinson.
Max Porter, International Booker Prize 2025 Chair of judges, said: “This list is our celebration of fiction in translation as a vehicle for pressing and surprising conversations about humanity. These mind-expanding books ask what might be in store for us, or how we might mourn, worship or survive. They offer knotty, sometimes pessimistic, sometimes radically hopeful answers to these questions.
“Taken together they build a miraculous lens through which to view human experience, both the truly disturbing and the achingly beautiful. They are each highly specific windows onto a world, but they are all gorgeously universal.” Each shortlisted title is awarded a prize of GBP 5,000 — shared between author and translator — and the announcement of the 2025 winning title will take place May 20 at a ceremony at Tate Modern in London, with the winning author receiving GBP 25,000 and the translator or translators dividing the other half of GBP 25,000.
In 2022, Geetanjali Shree and translator Daisy Rockwell won the coveted prize for the first-ever Hindi novel Tomb of Sand, with Perumal Murugan’s Tamil novel Pyre, translated into English by Aniruddhan Vasudevan making it to the longlist in 2023. Fiammetta Rocco, Administrator of the International Booker Prize, adds: “With all six books on the list published by independents for the first time, I’d like to thank the publishers for their ongoing commitment to bringing so many original and exciting international writers and translators to English language readers.
“Their passion, along with that of the many booksellers and librarians championing global writing, has no doubt helped to fuel a very welcome boom in translated fiction in the UK and Ireland.”
(With agency inputs)
