Winner of the 2025 International Booker Prize
In the twelve stories of Heart Lamp, Banu Mushtaq exquisitely captures the everyday lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India. Praised for their dry and gentle humour, these portraits of family and community tensions have garnered both censure from conservative quarters as well India's most prestigious literary awards.
'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
Rezensionen / Stimmen
'One of Karnataka's leading progressive writers.' New Age Islam '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 Recognition by a wider audience for this major literary voice is long overdue. * Vogue India * '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, starred review * '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 * '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 *
Sprache
Verlagsort
High Wycombe
Großbritannien
Produkt-Hinweis
Illustrationen
Illustrations; Illustrations
Maße
Höhe: 194 mm
Breite: 124 mm
Dicke: 12 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-1-916751-16-3 (9781916751163)
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Schweitzer Klassifikation
Banu Mushtaq is a writer, activist and lawyer in the state of Karnataka, southern India. Mushtaq began writing within the progressive protest literary circles in southwestern India in the 1970s and 1980s: critical of the caste and class system, the Bandaya Sahitya movement gave rise to influential Dalit and Muslim writers, of whom Mushtaq was one of the few women. She is the author of six short story collections, a novel, an essay collection and a poetry collection. She writes in Kannada and has won major awards for her literary works, including the Karnataka Sahitya Academy and the Daana Chintamani Attimabbe awards. Previously translated into Urdu, Hindi, Tamil and Malayalam, the first book-length translation of her work into English will be Heart Lamp: Selected Stories, to be published in 2025, while one of the stories from Heart Lamp has been published in the Paris Review.
