Banu Mushtaq wins International Booker Prize for Kannada short story collection ‘Heart Lamp’
Banu Mushtaq on Tuesday night scripted history by winning the International Booker Prize for her short story collection “Heart Lamp”. Her win puts Kannada on the world literature map. It is the first time that a short story collection has won the prize. It is also the first time that an Indian translator Deepa Bhasthi has won for translation after the award changed its format in 2016.
Also read: Banu Mushtaq and the power of words
“These beautiful, busy, life-affirming stories rise from Kannada, interspersed with the extraordinary socio-political richness of other languages and dialects,” author Max Porter who chaired the jury has been quoted as saying. “It speaks of women’s lives, reproductive rights, faith, caste, power and oppression.”
“Heart Lamp” was “something genuinely new for English readers’’ Porter said.
The collection spans stories written from 1990 to 2023. Beautifully curated by Deepa, the short story collection offers readers the expanse of her work. Vivid, evocative, sharp, witty and rooted in the strangeness of small-town real life, “Heart Lamp” reflect her concerns. The 50,000 pound prize will be shared by the author and the translator.
It was a “great honour’’ Banu said in her acceptance speech. It was “not as an individual but as a voice raised in chorus with so many others”.
This chorus is worth celebrating and making louder. Banu’s stories reflect the battle that all women fight with patriarchy, she questions it—whether it is in her work as a writer or a lawyer or as an activist—but her characters come from the world she lives in. She is Muslim, feminist and fearless. “In a world that often tries to divide us, literature remains one of the lost sacred spaces where we can live inside each other’s minds, if only for a few pages,’’ she said.”
Banu is the second Indian writer to win the International Booker prize in this form. Geetanjali Shree won the award in 2022 for "Tomb of Sand". It is telling that the International Booker prizes for India have been won by women writers—ones who speak their mind fearlessly. Both Geetanjali Shree and Banu have won for languages that have remained largely unexplored for translations. Geetanjali put Hindi, a language that is backed by the government, on the award map for literature, while Banu’s win for Kannada will ensure there will be more translations that will want to dip into its rich cultural legacy. Interestingly, both books have been translated by women.
