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.