Banu Mushtaq's "Heart Lamp" is the first Kannada title to be shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025. The collection of short stories, translated from Kannada to English by Deepa Bhasthi, tells stories of encroaching modernity and the lives of Muslim women in southern India. The judges praised Mushtaq's "witty, vivid, colloquial, moving and excoriating" style of writing.
At a ceremony in London on Thursday, the New Delhi-based writer said she was 'completely overwhelmed' with the 'bolt from the blue' as she accepted her prize, worth GBP 50,000 and shared with the book's English translator, Daisy Rockwell.
Author Geetanjali Shree's novel Tomb of Sand on Thursday became the first Hindi language work of fiction to be shortlisted for the International Booker Prize.
Indian author Perumal Murugan's Tamil novel Pyre is among 13 books from across Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America to make it to the longlist of the International Booker Prize 2023, announced by the Booker Prize Foundation in London on Tuesday.