Heart Lamp: Selected Stories

"The 2025 International Booker Prize —a sister prize, reserved for translated fiction—was one this year by Heart Lamp , selected stories by Banu Mushtaq, translated by Deepa Bhashti. Judge Anton Hur, when I spoke to him about the shortlist, reserved particular praise for the translation: “so daring and textured and vitalic.”"

"Oh, many things. But I have got to say that for me it was the translation—so daring and textured and vitalic. The stories also, for a book that has the word “heart” in the title, kept breaking mine. The way these women keep colliding with both tradition and modernity is so acutely observed. Anyone—of any gender or age or country—can’t help but relate to their struggles between past and present. We’re all doing that. It depends on the collection for me. Some are very uneven, but for Heart Lamp , I loved every story and read in anticipation of each ‘turn’ in the plot, the emotional hinge in which the story, and the reader, transforms. Short stories in translation do tend to rely on their translators even more than novels do, because every word counts about ten times more."

"Heart Lamp hurls you into southwest India, where Muslim women survive in a world of casual cruelty, one of rules made for – and by – men. In one story, a woman despairs in marital abandonment but finds strength in her daughter. Another woman is ignored as she begs for help for her daughter, later describing her relief at her baby’s death. Banu Mushtaq’s book isn’t a simplistic takedown of Islam. These women are evocative and fully formed. They are inspired by Mushtaq’s own experiences as a lawyer representing women in her own Kannada-speaking community. When the book won the International Booker Prize, Mushtaq described the moment feeling “like a thousand fireflies lighting up a single sky.” That’s how I felt reading this book."