Why Heart Lamp Made International Booker Prize History
Banu Mushtaq’s Heart Lamp, translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi, became the first short-story collection and the first Kannada work to win the International Booker Prize. Bhasthi was also the prize’s first Indian winning translator.
Timeline
- 1990–2023: The 12 selected stories were originally published in Kannada across more than three decades.
- 2025-04-08: And Other Stories published the English-language collection.
- 2025-05-20: Heart Lamp won the 2025 International Booker Prize at a ceremony at Tate Modern in London.
Heart Lamp made International Booker Prize history on May 20, 2025, by becoming the first collection of short stories to win the award and the first winning work translated from Kannada. The book was written by Banu Mushtaq and translated into English by Deepa Bhasthi. The Booker Foundation also identified Bhasthi as the first Indian translator to win the prize. [1][2]
The book contains 12 stories about women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India. They examine family and community tensions, patriarchal power, caste, class, faith and resistance while also using humor, vivid dialogue and oral storytelling traditions. The stories were written and originally published in Kannada between 1990 and 2023 rather than created as a single new narrative for the prize. [1][2][3]
Bhasthi did more than translate a fixed table of contents. According to the Booker Foundation, she selected and curated the English collection from Mushtaq’s larger body of short fiction. Her approach preserved elements of southern India’s multilingual speech, including some Kannada, Urdu and Arabic words, instead of flattening every expression into standardized English. The judges described that approach as a radical translation with a plurality of Englishes. [1][2]
The historical claim needs precise wording. Heart Lamp was the first short-story collection to win the International Booker Prize in its current annual book format and the first winner originally written in Kannada. It was not the first Indian-authored winner: the Booker Foundation describes Mushtaq as the second Indian author to win. The “first Indian translator” distinction applies to Bhasthi’s role as the winning translator. [1][4]
The International Booker Prize recognizes translated fiction published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. Eligible books can be long-form fiction or collections of short stories. The £50,000 winning purse is divided equally between author and translator, reflecting the award’s explicit focus on both the original writing and the act of translation. In 2025, Mushtaq and Bhasthi each received a trophy as joint winners. [1][4]
Heart Lamp was published in English by the independent press And Other Stories on April 8, 2025. The publisher describes it as Mushtaq’s first book-length English translation and lists the original language as Kannada. The prize announcement says the 2025 judges chose it from a six-book shortlist drawn from 154 publisher submissions to the longlist process. [1][3]
Its records matter because they broadened the forms and languages represented among International Booker winners. The award recognized a collection built across three decades, a major southern Indian language and a translation style that retained local linguistic texture. Those are documented prize facts; judgments about the book’s literary quality remain the views of readers and the jury rather than measurable records. [1][2][3][4]
Sources
- Booker Prizes — Heart Lamp wins the International Booker Prize 2025
- Booker Prizes — Heart Lamp book profile
- And Other Stories — Heart Lamp
- Booker Prizes — The International Booker Prize