Kannada writer Banu Mushtaq wins International Booker Prize for ‘Heart Lamp’

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.

Mushtaq on Tuesday (May 20) night described her win as a victory for diversity as she collected the prize at a ceremony at Tate Modern along with Deepa Bhasthi, who translated the title from Kannada to English.

‘No story is ever small’

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.

“If I may borrow a phrase from my own culture, this moment feels like a thousand fireflies lighting up a single sky — brief, brilliant, and utterly collective,” said Mushtaq.

“This is more than a personal achievement. It is an affirmation that we, as individuals and as a global community, can thrive when we embrace diversity, celebrate our differences, and uplift one another. Together, we create a world where every voice is heard, every story matters, and every person belongs,” she added.

“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,” Mushtaq went on.

“This book is my love letter to the idea that no story is local, that a tale born under a banyan tree in my village can cast shadows as far as this stage tonight. To every reader who journeys with me, you have made my Kannada language a shared home. It is a language that speaks of resilience and nuance. To write in Kannada is to inherit a legacy of cosmic wonder and earthly wisdom,” she added.

Also read: Banu Mushtaq interview: ‘Muslim women are capable of fighting their own battles’

“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,” she said.

Bhashti added: “What a beautiful win this is for my beautiful language.”

The competitors

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 on the shortlisted included 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.

Also read: How Kannada writer Banu Mushtaq shines a light on Muslim women’s struggles

Conversations about humanity

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 5,000 pounds — shared between author and translator and the winning prize money is split between Mushtaq and Bhashti, who receive 25,000 pounds each.

Also read: Deepa Bhasthi interview: ‘There’s nothing black and white in Banu Mushtaq’s stories’

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.

(With agency inputs)