Indian Muslim writer Banu Mushtaq wins International Booker Prize

May 21, 2025 by News Desk

Muslim writer, activist, and lawyer Banu Mushtaq has won the International Booker Prize 2025 for her Kannada short story collection Heart Lamp. This is the first Kannada book to receive the prestigious GBP 50,000 award.

The collection, translated into English by Deepa Bhasthi, features 12 stories exploring the lives, resilience, and sisterhood of women in patriarchal southern Indian communities. The prize was awarded at a ceremony in London’s Tate Modern.

Mushtaq called the win a victory for diversity and said literature offers a space to understand each other’s experiences. The judges praised the book for its fresh, vivid storytelling and innovative translation.

She grew up in a Muslim neighborhood in southern Karnataka, studying the Quran in Urdu like most girls around her. At eight, her government-employed father enrolled her in a Kannada-medium convent school, hoping for more. She worked hard to master Kannada, which later became her language of literary expression.

Her first published story came during a tough time—one year after marrying at 26, in a marriage marked by conflict she openly discussed in interviews.

Heart Lamp was written over 30 years and preserves the region’s multilingual character, including Urdu and Arabic words.

This marks the second time an Indian title has won the prize, following Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand in 2022.