2025 Booker Prize winner Banu Mushtaq illuminates the literary world

BANU Mushtaq’s Heart Lamp has illuminated more than just pages — it has lit a beacon for regional literature on the global stage. By winning the 2025 International Booker Prize, the first ever for a Kannada work, Mushtaq has not only scripted history but also shattered linguistic silos that long confined Indian literature within narrow boundaries. At 77, Mushtaq’s stories — spanning three decades and rich with journalistic rigour and activist intensity — are unapologetically rooted in the lived experiences of women, the marginalised, and the oppressed. Her characters fight caste, religious dogma and patriarchal violence with quiet but defiant grace. That these stories have now been globally recognised speaks volumes about the growing appetite for narratives that resist, rebel and redefine.

Equally commendable is the role of translator Deepa Bhasthi. Her “radical translation”, as some have described it, does not dilute the rawness of Mushtaq’s prose. Instead, it ensures that the soul of Kannada seeps into English without compromise. This collaborative victory is a triumph not just for literature, but also for the politics of representation. Mushtaq follows in the footsteps of Geetanjali Shree, who won the same prize in 2022. But while Tomb of Sand brought Hindi to global attention, Heart Lamp gives Kannada its spotlight.

Hopefully, this will embolden publishers, translators and institutions to invest in India’s diverse literary ecosystem beyond the metropolitan mainstream. In an era where culture is often commodified and dissent silenced, Heart Lamp reminds us that the pen, even when regional and restrained by translation, can still roar. It is a timely recognition not just of a writer, but of a language, a people and their stubborn refusal to be erased.

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