Heart Lamp Wins 2025 International Booker Prize for Fiction

Heart Lamp, a Kannada short story collection by Banu Mushtaq, translated by Deepa Bhasthi, wins the 2025 International Booker Prize.

on May 22, 2025

Heart Lamp Wins 2025 International Booker Prize

Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated into English by Deepa Bhasthi, is the International Booker Prize winner for 2025, the translated fiction award. The prize-winning book, the first short story collection to win the award, was revealed by Booker Prize-longlisted writer Max Porter, 2025 Chair of judges, at a ceremony at the Tate Modern in London on Tuesday, 20 May 2025. The International Booker Prize honors the important work of translation, with the £50,000 prize money split equally between translator and author.

Written between 1990 and 2023, the 12 stories of Heart Lamp recount the lives of women and girls in patriarchal communities of southern India. Mushtaq, a lawyer and foremost voice within progressive Kannada literature, is an unapologetic champion of women's rights and anti-caste and anti-religious oppression protestor in India, and was prompted to write the stories after witnessing the lives of women who approached her for assistance. She is the second Indian writer to be awarded the International Booker Prize after Geetanjali Shree in 2022.

Heart Lamp is the first Kannada novel to be shortlisted for the prize, a language in which an estimated 65 million people speak.

Deepa Bhasthi is the first Indian translator to be awarded the International Booker.

Independent publisher And Other Stories based in Sheffield is awarded the prize for the first time.

Max Porter, International Booker Prize 2025 judges Chair, stated, "Heart Lamp is something truly new for English readers. A revolutionary translation which shakes language, to form new textures in a plurality of Englishes. It provokes and opens up our vision of translation."

"These lovely, busy, life-affirming narratives emerge from Kannada, punctuated by the remarkable socio-political depth of other languages and dialects. It talks about women's lives, reproduction rights, religion, caste, power and oppression.".

"This was the one book the judges fell in love with, from our initial read. It's been a pleasure hearing the changing admiration for these stories from the various angles of the jury. We are delighted to present this timely and thrilling winner of the International Booker Prize 2025 to readers worldwide."

Banu Mushtaq stated, "My stories are about women how religion, society, and politics require them to be dutifully obedient and, in so doing, subject them to inhuman cruelties and turn them into mere subordinates. The day-to-day tales that feature in the media and that I have experienced personally have been my inspiration. The pain, agony, and helpless lives of these women evoke a strong emotional response in me. I don't do much research; my heart itself is my field of study."

Deepa Bhasthi has said, "Translation for me is a natural process, and every book requires a totally different approach. For Banu's stories, I read all of her published fiction first before I shortlisted it to the ones that are in Heart Lamp. I was privileged to have had a free hand in selecting what stories I wanted to translate, and Banu did not stop me from doing the disciplined messy way of doing things."