The Transformative Power of Literature: Why Did Heart Lamp Win?
The 2025 International Booker Prize was awarded to Heart Lamp, a work that pushes the boundaries of literature and expands the possibilities of cultural expression. Jury Chair Max Porter eloquently summarized the book’s impact:
“Heart Lamp is truly something new for English-language readers. A radical translation that upends language and creates new textures across multiple Englishes. It challenges and expands our understanding of translation. These beautiful, intense, life-affirming stories are infused with the extraordinary socio-political richness of Kannada. They speak of women’s lives, reproductive rights, faith, caste, power, and oppression. This was a book we loved from our very first reading, and it has been a joy to witness our growing appreciation for its stories from different perspectives. We are thrilled to share this bold and timely winner with readers around the world.”
Resistance of Women, the Price of Emotion
Comprising 12 short stories, Heart Lamp sheds light on the daily struggles of women and girls living in patriarchal communities in South India. Author Banu Mushtaq captures, through stories written between 1990 and 2023, the quiet and fierce resistance to family, caste, faith, and societal pressures.
Mushtaq’s prose is at once humorous and poignant, vibrant and unflinching. Her storytelling weaves rich, colloquial language to portray vivid characters—sparkling children, audacious grandmothers, clownish clerics, outlaw brothers, and often unlucky husbands. But most powerfully, it is the mothers who resist their own emotions at great personal cost that leave the deepest impression.
Banu Mushtaq: A Feminist Voice of Protest Literature
Born in Karnataka, Banu Mushtaq is a writer, lawyer, and women’s rights activist. She began publishing in the 1970s within progressive literary circles in southwest India. As one of the few women involved in the Bandaya Sahitya protest movement—which challenged caste and class hierarchies—she helped bring visibility to Dalit and Muslim voices in literature.
To date, she has published six short story collections, one novel, a collection of essays, and a poetry volume. She has been honored with prestigious awards including the Karnataka Sahitya Akademi and Daana Chintamani Attimabbe prizes.
Heart Lamp is the first full-length work of Mushtaq’s to be translated into English—an achievement that significantly broadens her literary reach. With this award, Mushtaq becomes the second Indian writer to win the International Booker Prize, and Heart Lamp becomes the first winning title to be translated from Kannada, a language spoken by approximately 65 million people.
Deepa Bhasthi: The Poetic Craft of Translation
The English translation by Deepa Bhasthi is more than a linguistic rendering; it is a transcreation that captures rhythm, emotion, and cultural nuance with remarkable skill. Heart Lamp defies conventional notions of translation, and Bhasthi’s role in this success is both central and masterful.
Heart Lamp is one of those rare literary peaks where language, storytelling, and human rights converge. With its voices of women, echoes of unspoken pain, and unflinching portrayals of resistance, this book has done more than win a prize—it has opened a new door in world literature.
And now, we eagerly await for this light to shine in our own language. Reading Heart Lamp in Turkish will bring these powerful stories even closer to our hearts.
