'Heart Lamp' takes the Booker Prize

THE 2025 International Booker Prize results were announced late last month and Banu Mushtaq, scooped the prize for her collection of short stories Heart Lamp.

- ORIELLE BERRY

Written by Mushtaq and translated into English by Deepa Bhasthi, it became the first Kannada language work to win the 2025 International Booker Prize, marking a historic moment for Indian regional literature.

Kannada is a language of south India spoken by 50-80 million people. The International Booker Prize, formerly known as the Man Booker International Prize, is a prestigious annual award for translated fiction, honouring the best long-form works or short-story collections published in the UK or Ireland.

Mushtaq’s work features stories portraying women’s struggles under the patriarchal system in India, echoing the Bandaya Sahitya movement and highlighting universal themes of gender discrimination.

In the 1970s, the Bandaya movement sparked a wave of literary and social activism around women's rights, and Dalit issues, influencing politics and literature across Karnataka and India.