Heart Lamp: Selected Stories | WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2025

WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2025 In Heart Lamp In Heart Lamp Banu Mushtaq exquisitely captures the everyday lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India. Published originally in the Kannada these portraits of family and community tensions testify to Mushtaqs years as a journalist and lawyer in which she tirelessly championed womens rights and protested all forms of caste and religious oppression. Written in a style at once witty vivid colloquial moving and excoriating its 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 Indias most prestigious literary awards; this is a collection sure to be read for years to come.