Thursday | May 22, 2025
Indian Author Banu Mushtaq and Translator Deepa Bhasthi Win 2025 International Booker Prize for “Heart Lamp”
Indian author Banu Mushtaq and her translator Deepa Bhasthi were announced as the winners of the 2025 International Booker Prize for fiction on Tuesday, for their collaborative work on Heart Lamp, a poignant collection of 12 short stories that span more than three decades. Originally written in Kannada, the stories offer an unflinching look at the everyday lives, inner worlds, and systemic struggles faced by women in southern India.
The award was announced at a special ceremony held at London’s Tate Modern, with Max Porter — bestselling author and former Booker Prize-longlisted writer — presiding as chair of the five-member judging panel. Porter described the stories as “radical” in both content and form and lauded the depth and cultural resonance that emerged through Bhasthi’s translation.
This year’s award marks a historic moment for the International Booker Prize. Heart Lamp is the first-ever collection of short stories to win the prize since its current format was introduced in 2016. Deepa Bhasthi also becomes the first Indian translator and the ninth woman translator overall to receive the honor, while Banu Mushtaq becomes the sixth female author to win the prestigious award under its modern iteration.
Spoken by approximately 65 million people, Kannada is the official language of the Indian state of Karnataka. Porter praised the translation as a “radical act of literary devotion,” highlighting how the work beautifully preserved the linguistic and socio-political diversity of southern India. “These beautiful, busy, life-affirming stories rise from Kannada,” Porter said, “interspersed with the extraordinary socio-political richness of other languages and dialects. It speaks of women’s lives, reproductive rights, faith, caste, power, and oppression.”
Spanning stories written between 1990 and 2023, the book was carefully curated by Bhasthi to reflect both the evolution of Mushtaq’s literary voice and the changing social realities of the region. Her translation makes a concerted effort to retain the multilingual texture of life in the Indian South — a region where diverse tongues often overlap in daily speech.
At a recent event for shortlisted authors, Mushtaq — who is also a practicing lawyer and social activist — spoke about the thematic urgency of her stories. “They 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,” she explained. Her work provides a vital lens into the marginalized experiences of Indian women, focusing on issues such as caste-based discrimination, religious orthodoxy, and gender-based violence.
The £50,000 prize ($66,000 USD) will be shared equally between Mushtaq and Bhasthi, in line with the award’s policy of recognizing the essential partnership between author and translator. In addition to the cash prize, each recipient also receives a trophy commemorating their achievement.
The International Booker Prize, distinct from the original Booker Prize, is awarded annually to a work of fiction translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland. The original Booker Prize for English-language fiction will be awarded later this year, continuing the tradition of celebrating literary excellence from around the world.