New Delhi: Indian author Banu Mushtaq and translator Deepa Bhasthi have won the International Booker Prize for fiction.
Mushtaq was honoured for the book ‘Heart Lamp,’ a collection of 12 short stories written over three decades chronicling everyday lives and struggles of women in southern India.
“This feels like a thousand fireflies lighting a single sky – brief, brilliant and utterly collective,” Mushtaq said.
The award was announced by bestselling Booker Prize-longlisted author Max Porter, who was chairman of a five-member voting panel, at a ceremony at London’s Tate Modern on Tuesday evening.
The book, written in Kannada, was translated into English by Bhasthi.
The prize money of 50,000 GBP ($66,000) will be divided equally between the author and translator. Both were presented with a trophy too.
Among the many landmarks set by Mushtaq, this is the first time the Booker has been awarded to a collection of short stories. Significantly, Bhasthi is the first Indian translator to land the prestigious prize since it took on its current form in 2016.
Also, this is the second Indian book to win this honour after Geetanjali Shree and translator Daisy Rockwell’s Tomb of Sand (Ret Samadhi) in 2022.
‘Heart Lamp’, which beat five other books which made it to the finals, comprises stories written from 1990 to 2023. They were collected and curated by Bhasthi, who was keen to preserve the multilingual nature of southern India in her translation.
Praising the the “radical” nature of the translation, Porter said “it’s been a joy” to listen to the evolving appreciation of the stories by members of the jury.
“These beautiful, busy, life-affirming stories rise from Kannada, interspersed with the extraordinary socio-political richness of other languages and dialects. It speaks of women’s lives, reproductive rights, faith, caste, power and oppression,” Porter analysed.
Who is Banu Mushtaq?
The 77-yar-old Karnataka-based Mushtaq is the first Kannada author to win the Booker Prize, which is awarded to the best English-translated fiction.
Besides being a writer, Mushtaq is a lawyer and activist as well, and is known for her advocacy of women’s rights and her legal work challenging discrimination.
In Mushtaq’s own words, her stories reflect “how religion, society and politics demand unquestioning obedience from women and in the process, inflict cruelty upon them.”
Even in her personal life, she fought the patriarchal system to defy social norms and marry a man of her choice.
Her first shirt story was written in middle school, but it was after one of her stories was published in popular Kannada magazine Prajamata at the age of 26 that she caught attention.
Inspired by progressive movements in Karnataka, she travelled the state and elsewhere. She got involved in Bandaya Sahitya movement, a protest that challenged cast and class oppression. She engaged with people who struggled, which gave her the strength to write.
She also has six short story collections, a novel, an essay collection and a poetry collection.
Her first five short stories were compiled in one consolidated volume in 2013 titled ‘Haseena Matthu Ithara Kathegalu’, and a compilation called ‘Hennu Haddina Swayamvara in 2023.
She was bestowed with the Karnataka Sahitya Academy and Daana Chintamani Attimabbe awards.