Exploring the lives of those often on the periphery of society, these vivid stories hold immense emotional and moral weight.
“In a dozen stories – written across three decades – Banu Mushtaq, a major voice within progressive Kannada literature – portrays the lives of those often on the periphery of society: girls and women in Muslim communities in southern India. These stories speak truth to power and slice through the fault lines of caste, class, and religion widespread in contemporary society, exposing the rot within: corruption, oppression, injustice, violence. Yet, at its heart, Heart Lamp returns us to the true, great pleasures of reading: solid storytelling, unforgettable characters, vivid dialogue, tensions simmering under the surface, and a surprise at each turn. Deceptively simple, these stories hold immense emotional, moral, and socio-political weight, urging us to dig deeper.” —The International Booker Prize 2025 Judges
“Searing, phantasmagorical, unclassifiable . . . What Bhasthi identifies as “a rich and vibrant tradition of oral storytelling” shines forth. Here are wicked in-laws, bedazzled officials, revered mother figures. Feuds fester until families are left rancid. The gossip is radioactive.” —Kate McLoughlin, Times Literary Supplement
“Heart Lamp hurls you into southwest India, where Muslim women survive in a world of casual cruelty, one of rules made for – and by – men. In one story, a woman despairs in marital abandonment but finds strength in her daughter. Another woman is ignored as she begs for help for her daughter, later describing her relief at her baby's death. Banu Mushtaq's book isn't a simplistic takedown of Islam. These women are evocative and fully formed. They are inspired by Mushtaq's own experiences as a lawyer representing women in her own Kannada-speaking community. When the book won the International Booker Prize, Mushtaq described it as ‘like a thousand fireflies lighting up a single sky.’ That's how I felt reading this book.” —Diaa Hadid, NPR correspondent, International Desk
“Banu Mushtaq was one of the founding members of the Bandaya Sahitya Sanghatane, which means the Rebel Literary Movement. A favorite phrase of the movement was: ‘The dear friend whose heart beats for people’s pain.’ We see this compassion and love for the people, in particular Muslim women, that Mushtaq writes about in her stories. As a friend, she writes from amidst them, for them, through the struggles, details and complexity of their lives. Deepa Bhasthi's beautiful translation shares these stories with a wider readership.” —Kavita Bhanot
“With a tender heart and a sharp eye for nuance, Banu Mushtaq pens stories with deep contextual understanding of patriarchal institutions and with sympathy to the modern realities of contemporary Muslim women.” —Joshua Jones
“A significant presence in Kannada literature, Banu Mushtaq reveals the varied realities of contemporary women with rare talent and art. Deepa Bhasthi’s rich translation captures the original’s nuances of voice, context and experience, bringing this important work into English for new readers in India and internationally.” —PEN Presents Selection Panel
“One of Karnataka’s leading progressive writers.” —New Age Islam
“Mushtaq makes her English-language debut with this virtuosic collection . . . The stories are united by a keen eye for the interplay between their characters’ social circumstances and inner lives, as religious authority and economic class exert their influence. It’s an excellent introduction to an author of rare talent.” — Publishers Weekly ,
“Bhasthi provides us a glimpse into Mushtaq’s code-switching in her translator’s note and through her superb translation . . . [The] final story, “Be a Woman Once, Oh Lord!” is written as an everywoman’s plea to God . . . Her account, she says, has been “written from the heart, a woman’s heart, a string of letters written with the heart’s sharp nib and the red ink inside”—a fitting description for Heart Lamp as a whole as Mushtaq and Bhasthi evoke and illuminate the inner worlds of women.” —Areeb Ahmad, Words without Borders
“This selection of Mushtaq’s stories about Muslim girls and women in southern India, translated by Deepa Bhasthi, is a finalist for this year’s International Booker Prize. Mushtaq is a journalist, lawyer and women’s rights activist, and these fictional stories span more than 30 years of her career as an author.” — Washington Post
“These twelve stories, selected by her translator Deepa Bhasthi, offer affecting portraits of family and community. Specifically, they illuminate the lives of Muslim and Dalit women and children in southern India . . . Mushtaq’s compassion and dark humour give texture to her stories. These deceptively simple tales decry the subjugation of women while celebrating their resilience. Bhasthi’s nuanced translation retains several Kannada, Urdu and Arabic words, eloquently conveying the language’s enduring tradition of oral storytelling.” —Lucy Popescu, Financial Times
“In each story, Mushtaq builds the tension before it becomes unbearable for her characters and readers. The women are aware that there’s something missing in their lives, though they are not fully aware of the extent of their subjugation.” — Sayari Debnath, Scroll.in
“The critical acclaim of Heart Lamp is deserved; Mushtaq is — and has been for decades — a writer with a noticeably powerful and profound voice. The potential recognition of her stories through the Bhasti’s translation of Heart Lamp will introduce her stories, already beloved in Kannada, to a wider and diversified audience. One only wishes the collection that earned her international fame was tighter and cleaner to accurately reflect Mushtaq’s talent.” — Mahika Dhar, Asian Review of Books
“In fact, apart from everything else, what strikes the most is the vivid imagery Mushtaq creates throughout the book, which takes you deep into the women’s personal spaces. It reads as if one is inside the home, as a silent spectator, as events unfold.” —Shubhangi Shah, The Week
“Longlisted for the 2025 International Booker, this excellent collection of short stories by the writer, activist, and lawyer Banu Mushtaq depicts the ordinary lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India. Particular highlights for me included the opening story to the collection, ‘Stone Slabs for Shaista Mahal,’ exploring the disposable nature of wifedom under patriarchy, and ‘A Decision of the Heart,’ in which a man decides to marry off his widowed mother. Deepa Bhasthi’s translator’s note, in which she delves into the process of translating from the Kannada language, offers some interesting insights into how language structures everyday relationships, too.” —Rhian Sasseen, Phrase books
With a tender heart and a sharp eye for nuance, Banu Mushtaq pens stories with deep contextual understanding of patriarchal institutions and with sympathy to the modern realities of contemporary Muslim women.”
author of Local Fires: Stories Joshua Jones
Affecting portraits of family and community…These deceptively simple tales decry the subjugation of women while celebrating their resilience… eloquently conveying the language’s enduring tradition of oral storytelling.”
Mushtaq’s stories about Muslim girls and women in southern India…span more than thirty years of her career as an author.”
Exploring the lives of those often on the periphery of society, these vivid stories hold immense emotional and moral weight.”
The International Booker Prize 2025 Judges
Deepa Bhasthi’s rich translation captures the original’s nuances of voice, context and experience, bringing this important work into English for new readers in India and internationally.”
PEN Presents Selection Panel
One of Karnataka’s leading progressive writers.”
praise for the author New Age Islam
Banu Mushtaq was one of the founding members of the Bandaya Sahitya Sanghatane, which means the Rebel Literary Movement. A favorite phrase of the movement was: ‘The dear friend whose heart beats for people’s pain.’ We see this compassion and love for the people, in particular Muslim women, that Mushtaq writes about in her stories. As a friend, she writes from amidst them, for them, through the struggles, details and complexity of their lives. Deepa Bhasthi’s beautiful translation shares these stories with a wider readership.”
editor of Violent Phenomena Kavita Bhanot
Banu Mushtaq was one of the founding members of the Bandaya Sahitya Sanghatane, which means the Rebel Literary Movement. A favorite phrase of the movement was: ‘The dear friend whose heart beats for people’s pain.’ We see this compassion and love for the people, in particular Muslim women, that Mushtaq writes about in her stories. As a friend, she writes from amidst them, for them, through the struggles, details and complexity of their lives. Deepa Bhasthi’s beautiful translation shares these stories with a wider readership.”
One of Karnataka’s leading progressive writers.”
With a tender heart and a sharp eye for nuance, Banu Mushtaq pens stories with deep contextual understanding of patriarchal institutions and with sympathy to the modern realities of contemporary Muslim women.”
★ 2025-06-07
The first book of short stories to win the International Booker Prize, Mushtaq’s collection is also the first prizewinner to have been translated from Kannada, an Indian language whose flavor comes through in Bhasthi’s fluent translation, as when, in the first story, a newlywed woman ponders how to introduce her husband: “If I use the term yajamana and call him owner, then I will have to be a servant, as if I am an animal or a dog.” An attorney, activist, and sometime journalist, Mushtaq often writes of Muslim women in unhappy relationships. In one story, a woman returns home, facing shame for leaving an unfaithful husband forced on her in an arranged marriage, and chides her relatives for their role in her unhappiness: “I begged you not to make me stop studying. None of you listened to me. Many of my classmates aren’t even married, and yet I have become an old woman.” With five children to support, she desperately seeks a way out, with surprising consequences. In another story, a woman, maddened by a houseful of boisterous children on summer vacation, decides that the only way to get some peace and quiet is to enforce bedrest on the older boys—and that means enrolling them in a mass circumcision that is euphemistically billed as a celebration for the Muslim prophet Ibrahim, “a collective exercise in which children look forward to an event but end up screaming loudly together.” Mushtaq’s characters are frequently at odds, and several have strange foibles, as with a religious teacher who becomes addicted to gobi manchuri, a cauliflower dish, which leads to some decidedly unsaintly behavior. The book is not without its flashes of sharp-edged, ironic humor, as when a woman seemingly caught in the throes of dementia is offered a Pepsi as “the drink of heaven,” but more often Mushtaq writes in near-documentary style of lives lived in constant struggle.
A memorable introduction to a gifted writer from whom we should hope to hear more.
