Read by Deepti Gupta, Vikas Adam

Winner of the 2025 International Booker PrizeWinner of a PEN Translates Award A monumental first collection in English from Banu Mushtaq: lawyer, activist, champion of Muslim women, and winner of India's highest literary honors. In the twelve stories of Heart Lamp, Banu Mushtaq exquisitely captures the everyday lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India. Published originally in the Kannada language between 1990 and 2023, praised for their dry and gentle humor, these portraits of family and community tensions testify to Mushtaq's years as a journalist and lawyer, in which she tirelessly championed women's rights and protested all forms of caste and religious oppression. Written in a style at once witty, vivid, colloquial, moving, and excoriating, it's in her characters-the sparky children, the audacious grandmothers, the buffoonish maulvis and thug brothers, the oft-hapless husbands, and the mothers above all, surviving their feelings at great cost-that Mushtaq emerges as an astonishing writer and observer of human nature, building disconcerting emotional heights out of a rich spoken style. Her opus has garnered both censure from conservative quarters as well India's most prestigious literary awards; this is a collection sure to be read for years to come. "Affecting portraits of family and community…These deceptively simple tales decry the subjugation of women while celebrating their resilience… eloquently conveying the language's enduring tradition of oral storytelling." "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." "Exploring the lives of those often on the periphery of society, these vivid stories hold immense emotional and moral weight." "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." "Mushtaq's stories about Muslim girls and women in southern India…span more than thirty years of her career as an author." "One of Karnataka's leading progressive writers." "With a tender heart and a sharp eye for nuance, Banu Mushtaq pens stories with deep contextual understanding of patriarchal institutions and with sympathy to the modern realities of contemporary Muslim women." "Banu Mushtaq was one of the founding members of the Bandaya Sahitya Sanghatane, which means the Rebel Literary Movement. A favorite phrase of the movement was: 'The dear friend whose heart beats for people's pain.' We see this compassion and love for the people, in particular Muslim women, that Mushtaq writes about in her stories. As a friend, she writes from amidst them, for them, through the struggles, details and complexity of their lives. Deepa Bhasthi's beautiful translation shares these stories with a wider readership."

Mode of access: World Wide Web