International Booker Prize 2025 winners – Banu Mushtaq & Deepa Bhashti

On 20 May 2025, at a glittering ceremony at the Tate Modern, London, the International Booker Prize 2025 winners were announced. They were Kannada writer Banu Mushtaq and translator Deepa Bhashti. They won it for the collection of short stories called Heart Lamp: Selected Stories. It has been published in the UK by And Other Stories and in India/South Asia by Penguin Random House India. The original stories in Kannada were published by Abhiruchi Prakashana.

Heart Lamp is an extraordinary collection of short stories. In it Banu Mushtaq has written about the lives women lead. Or rather, she has depicted the life cycle of a girl to womanhood and the many, many responsibilities that are thrust upon her by men. There is also persecution and violation of the girl/woman’s rights by men/patriarchy. It is not necessarily always physical violence that is shown, but emotional, psychological, financial, sexual, and mental violence are construed as forms of gender violence globally. There is sufficient evidence in the stories to show how these are perpetrated upon women on a daily basis in the most ordinary of situations and frighteningly, by men and women, closest to them in their familial/friends circle. It is a vicious tyranny. Yet, Banu Mushtaq in her act of writing, illustrate how women can act and push back, if need be. It is definitely not easy fighting systemic patriarchy and the social indoctrination of girls from a young age as to how they should conduct themselves vis-a-vis boys/men. Most often than not they are taught to disregard their innermost feelings and wishes and conform to the wishes of society/family for their own good. These wishes could be as simple as pursuing higher education and learning to be independent. Having said that, while these stories are ostensibly about women and different responsibilities that motherhood brings with it, Banu also do not shy away from exploring masculine responses to the domestic scenarios. It is a brilliant balance that she achieves. Of course, it also left me wondering if the short story form gave her more freedom to mimic the manner in which women speak and live their chaotic lives, operating at multiple levels, rather than a longer form of writing. A question that remains to be answered.

Banu speaks Dakhni, a fascinating mix of Persian, Dehlavi, Marathi, Kannada, and Telugu. Deepa’s mother tongue is Havyaka, a dialect that harks back to Old Kannada and is spoken by a small community of upper-caste Brahmins from the Arabian coast. Yet, the rhythm of the English flows beautifully in the translation. In fact, it is impossible to discern how much of the translated text that is available to Anglophone readers is a direct and true translation of the Kannada text or has it also been transcreated along the way. Having said that, Heart Lamp is a wonderful introduction Banu Mushtaq’s oeuvre. Here is a perceptive extract from Deepa’s essay on translating this text that is published in the book:

When I began to work with Banu’s stories, I grappled with what this project would be: a lapsed Hindu and an upper-caste person translating a minority voice into our shared alien language. It would be a disservice to reduce Banu’s work to her religious identity, for her stories transcend the confines of a faith and its cultural traditions. Nonetheless, in today’s India, where a decade of far-right politics has descended dangerously into Hindutva-led majoritarianism, hatred and severe persecution of minorities – iterations of such violence are found in many other countries of the world too, lest we forget – it is essential to note the milieu that she lives in and works out of. While of course a translator need not be from the same background as the writer, it still felt important to me to acknowledge our differences, our respective positions and privileges, and use this awareness to be more responsible and sensitive in my translation.

These stories are very refreshing to read given that Banu does not capitulate to any form of othering but chooses to depict life as it is within the community. It is almost as if by reading these stories, she is encouraging cross-pollination of our diverse cultures, much in the fabulously elegant way she uses references to Rama and Lakshman and Shakuni Mama. It exemplifies our syncretic Indian culture. Hence, it is no surprise that years ago a fatwa was issued against Banu Mushtaq for her outspoken writings. In fact, she was also attacked but her husband managed to fend off the attacker. (“India’s Banu Mushtaq makes history with International Booker win” BBC dot com, 21 May 2025)

There is magic in this partnership. It worked as is evident in the International Booker Prize 2025 win.

Author Banu Mushtaq (L) and translator Deepa Bhasthi, winners of the International Booker Prize 2025 ceremony at Tate Modern, London.

It was an honour and a privilege to interview the winners within hours of their win being announced. We recorded a special video podcast on 21 May 2025. The audio tracks were uploaded on the TOI website and Spotify. The video will be uploaded on YouTube shortly.

This morning’s Delhi NCR edition of Times of India has carried the news/podcast in all editions across India. It was on the front page and six articles inside. The QR code to the TOI Bookmark episode was embedded in an article and the brand name highlighted.

Front page, the Times of India, Thursday, 21 May 2025

The Times of India, Thursday, 21 May 2025

The prestigious literary prize, worth £50,000, is split equally, giving the author and translator their due recognition. The winners were announced by chair of the judges, Max Porter. He said ‘Heart Lamp is something genuinely new for English readers. A radical translation which ruffles language, to create new textures in a plurality of Englishes. It challenges and expands our understanding of translation. This was the book the judges really loved, right from our first reading.’ Heart Lamp is the first collection of short stories to have been awarded this literary prize.

Banu Mushtaq is a writer, activist and a lawyer and is from the state of Karnataka, southern India. Mushtaq began writing within the progressive protest literary circles in southwestern India in the 1970s and 1980s: critical of the caste and class system, the Bandaya Sahitya movement gave rise to influential Dalit and Muslim writers, of whom Mushtaq was one of the few women. She is a prominent champion of women’s rights. She was inspired to write stories by the experiences of women who came to her seeking help.

She is the author of six short story collections, a novel, an essay collection and a poetry collection. She writes in Kannada and has won major awards for her literary works, including the Karnataka Sahitya Academy and the Daana Chintamani Attimabbe awards. Her International Booker Prize 2025 winning book Heart Lamp is the first book-length translation of her work into English, having been translated into Urdu, Hindi, Tamil and Malayalam.

Kannada is spoken by an estimated 65 million people. These stories were written by Banu Mushtaq over a period of 30 + years, from 1990 to 2023. They were selected and curated by Deepa Bhasthi, who was keen to preserve the multi-lingual nature of southern India. When the characters use Urdu or Arabic words in conversation, these are left in the original, reproducing the unique rhythms of spoken language.

Author Banu Mushtaq (R) and translator Deepa Bhasthi, winners of the International Booker Prize 2025 ceremony at Tate Modern, London.

Deepa Bhasthi is a writer and literary translator based in Kodagu, southern India. Bhasthi’s columns, essays and cultural criticism have been published in India and internationally. Her published translations from Kannada include a novel by Kota Shivarama Karanth and a collection of short stories by Kodagina Gouramma. Her translation of Mushtaq’s stories won a PEN Presents award in 2024, a scheme from English PEN designed to support and showcase sample translations, giving UK publishers access to titles from underrepresented languages and regions. They were collected as the International Booker Prize 2025 winning book Heart Lamp.

Max Porter presents author Banu Mushtaq and translator Deepa Bhasthi, winners of the International Booker Prize 2025 ceremony at Tate Modern, London.

Listen to their acceptance speech.

Fiammetta Rocco, Administrator of the International Booker Prize, said: ‘Heart Lamp, stories written by a great advocate of women’s rights over three decades and translated with sympathy and ingenuity, should be read by men and women all over the world. The book speaks to our times, and to the ways in which many are silenced.

‘In a divided world, a younger generation is increasingly connecting with global stories that have been skilfully reworked for English-language readers through the art of translation. Since 2016, the International Booker Prize has promoted the world’s best writing in translation, and it’s been fantastic that this year’s nominated titles have come to life through our “A feast of fiction from around the world” campaign, which we’ve been delighted to see projected through new and returning collaborations with cultural venues, festivals, booksellers and content creators.

‘Next year the prize celebrates ten years in its current form, and I am optimistic that the anniversary will lead more people to discover and embrace great translated fiction.’

The winning book was chosen by the 2025 judging panel, chaired by Porter, which comprised: prize-winning poet, director and photographer Caleb Femi; writer and Publishing Director of Wasafiri Sana Goyal; author and International Booker Prize-shortlisted translator Anton Hur; as well as award-winning singer-songwriter Beth Orton. The judges were looking for the best work of long-form fiction or collection of short stories translated into English and published in the UK and/or Ireland between 1 May 2024 and 30 April 2025.

Both Mushtaq and Bhasthiwere nominated for the International Booker Prize for the first time this yearand Heart Lamp is Mushtaq’s first English-language publication. Mushtaq is the second Indian author to win the prize, and follows Geetanjali Shree who won in 2022 for Tomb of Sand, translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell. Bhasthi is the first Indian translator to win the prize. Mushtaq is the sixth female author, with Bhasthi the ninth female translator, to be awarded the prize since it took on its current form in 2016.

At just over 200 pages long, Heart Lamp was the second longest book on a shortlist of slim books: four of the six shortlisted works are under 200 pages long, with Under the Eye of the Big Bird the longest, at 278 pages.