Banu Mushtaq wins Booker Prize for Kannada short story collection

Writer, activist and lawyer Banu Mushtaq’s short story collection ‘Heart Lamp’ has become the first Kannada title to win the coveted GBP 50,000 International Booker Prize in London.

Mushtaq described her win as a victory for diversity as she collected the prize on Tuesday night at a ceremony at Tate Modern along with her translator Deepa Bhasthi, who translated the title from Kannada to English. The winning



collection of 12 short stories chronicles the resilience, resistance, wit, and sisterhood of everyday women in patriarchal communities in southern India, vividly brought to life through a rich tradition of oral storytelling.

Shortlisted among six 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.