Heart Lamp

Heart Lamp gathers twelve short stories by the Kannada writer and activist Banu Mushtaq, written across more than three decades and chosen and translated into English by Deepa Bhasthi. Together they open a window onto the everyday lives of Muslim women and girls in the towns and villages of southern India — wives, mothers, daughters, and grandmothers navigating faith, family, and a social order stacked against them.

Mushtaq writes from deep inside these households, where marriages, mosques, in-laws, and religious authorities press hardest on women, yet her characters are never merely victims. They argue, scheme, endure, and flare into revolt; the collection is shot through with sharp humour and a fierce, unsentimental tenderness. Drawn from her years in the Bandaya (protest) literary movement and her work as a lawyer, the stories carry the authority of a writer who has spent a lifetime listening to the women others overlook.

Awarded the International Booker Prize in 2025 — the first Kannada-language work and the first short-story collection to win — Heart Lamp is a landmark of translated literature. Bhasthi's translation deliberately keeps the texture of the original languages intact, and the result is intimate, resilient, and quietly incendiary.