Banu Mushtaq scripts history, wins International Booker Prize 2025 for ‘Heart Lamp’; here's all about the Indian author

Banu Mushtaq, Indian writer, lawyer and activist, on Tuesday won the International Booker Prize for her short story collection Heart Lamp. She becomes the first author of Kannada-language literature to be honoured with the esteemed literary award for translated fiction.

Banu Mushtaq will share the £50,000 ($67,000) prize with her translator Deepa Bhasthi, who also helped choose the stories.

“This moment feels like a thousand fire flies lighting a single sky -- brief, brilliant and utterly collective. I accept this great honour not as an individuals but as a voice raised in chorus with so many others,” AFP quoted Banu as saying at a ceremony at the Tate Modern gallery in London.

"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," she added.

Who is Banu Mushtaq?

Based in Hassan, Karnataka, Banu Mushtaq, 77, is an activist, lawyer and writer who writes in Kannada. Her works have also been published in Urdu, Tamil, Hindi, Malayalam and, most recently, English.

At age 8, she was enrolled in a Kannada-language missionary school in Shivamogga, on the condition that she learn "to read and write Kannada in six months"; however, she began to write after a few days of school.

She was a reporter for the newspaper Lankesh Patrike and, for a brief period, worked at All India Radio in Bengaluru.

Banu and her family were subjected to a three-month "social boycott" following her advocacy for Muslim women's right to enter mosques. In the early 2000s, she became involved with the civil society group ‘Komu Souhardha Vedike’, participating in protests against attempts to prevent Muslims from visiting the syncretic shrine at Baba Budangiri in Karnataka’s Chikmagalur district.

Her other awards include the Karnataka Sahitya Academy, Daana Chintamani Attimabbe, and the 2024 PEN English Translate Award.

Heart Lamp is a collection of 12 stories originally published between 1990 and 2023. They showcase everyday life in Muslim communities of southern India, emphasising on the experiences of women and girls.

Chair of the judges, Max Porter, applauded Heart Lamp as “something genuinely new for English readers, stating, "A radical translation which ruffles language, to create new textures in a plurality of Englishes. It challenges and expands our understanding of translation."

(With inputs from AFP)