HEART LAMP

Winner of the International Booker Prize 2025 *Heart Lamp* by *Banu Mushtaq* exquisitely captures the everyday lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India. Published originally in Kannada these portraits of family and community tensions testify to *Mushtaq*''s years as a journalist and lawyer in which she tirelessly championed women''s rights and protested all forms of caste and religious oppression. Written in a style that is at once witty vivid colloquial moving and excoriating it is in her characters - the sparky children the audacious grandmothers the buffoonish maulvis and thug brothers the oft-hapless husbands and the mothers above all surviving their feelings at great cost - that *Mushtaq* emerges as an astonishing writer and observer of human nature building disconcerting emotional heights out of a rich spoken style. Her opus has garnered both censure from conservative quarters as well as India''s most prestigious literary awards; this is a collection sure to be read for years to come.