Banu Mushtaq’s Kannada short story collection on International Booker Prize longlist

Karnataka-based writer, activist and lawyer Banu Mushtaq's short story collection ‘Heart Lamp’, translated from Kannada to English by Deepa Bhasthi, was on Tuesday longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025 in London.

Chosen among 13 worldwide titles, Mushtaq's work appealed to the judges for its "witty, vivid, colloquial, moving and excoriating" style of capturing portraits of family and community tensions. It marks the first time a Kannada title has made it to the longlist of the GBP 50,000 literary prize – divided between author and translator.

"Exploring the lives of those often on the periphery of society, these vivid stories hold immense emotional and moral weight,” the judges said of Mushtaq and Bhasthi's ‘Heart Lamp’.

Its 12 stories set in the Muslim communities of southern India and published originally between 1990 and 2023 will now go head-to-head with authors from across the world. While the author described it as a “tremendous honour for literature in the Kannada language”, the translator said she was “beyond thrilled”.

"This recognition is not just personal but a significant moment for Kannada literature. That the everyday experiences of South Indian women building lives under patriarchal pressures have resonated with the distinguished jury, and hopefully, will soon reach a global readership, is both humbling and affirming. It is a testament to the universality of Banu Mushtaq's stories and to the power of translation,” Bhasthi said in a statement released by publishers Penguin from Delhi.

The annual prize celebrates the best works of long-form fiction or collections of short stories translated into English and published in the UK and/or Ireland between May 2024 and April 2025. Penguin said it will be releasing 'Heart Lamp' in the Indian subcontinent in April.

“It's been a privilege to work with someone who has championed women's voices so effectively and for so long,” said Moutushi Mukherjee, Penguin Commissioning Editor who worked on the book.

The six books shortlisted from the longlist for this year's prize will be announced on April 8, with each shortlisted title awarded a prize of GBP 5,000 – shared between author and translator. The announcement of the 2025 winning title will take place on May 20 at a ceremony at Tate Modern in London, with the winning author receiving GBP 25,000 and the translator or translators dividing the other half of GBP 25,000.

In 2022, Geetanjali Shree and translator Daisy Rockwell won the coveted prize for the first-ever Hindi novel ‘Tomb of Sand', with Perumal Murugan's Tamil novel ‘Pyre', translated into English by Aniruddhan Vasudevan making it to the longlist in 2023.

The other titles on the longlist include: ‘The Book of Disappearance' by Ibtisam Azem, translated from Arabic by Sinan Antoon; ‘On the Calculation of Volume I' by Solvej Balle, translated from Danish by Barbara J. Haveland; ‘There's a Monster Behind the Door' by Gaëlle Bélem, translated from French by Karen Fleetwood and Laëtitia Saint-Loubert; ‘Solenoid' by Mircea Cartarescu, translated from Romanian by Sean Cotter; ‘Reservoir Bitches' by Dahlia de la Cerda, translated from Spanish by Heather Cleary and Julia Sanches; ‘Small Boat' by Vincent Delecroix, translated from French by Helen Stevenson; ‘Hunchback' by Saou Ichikawa, translated from Japanese by Polly Barton;  ‘Under the Eye of the Big Bird' by Hiromi Kawakami, translated from Japanese by Asa Yoneda; ‘Eurotrash' by Christian Kracht, translated from German by Daniel Bowles; ‘Perfection' by Vincenzo Latronico, translated from Italian by Sophie Hughes; ‘On a Woman's Madness' by Astrid Roemer, translated from Dutch by Lucy Scott; and ‘A Leopard-Skin Hat' by Anne Serre, translated from French by Mark Hutchinson.