Banu Mushtaq and Deepa Bhasthi Make History by Winning the International Booker Prize 2025

It has been a big night for Indian literature, as Heart Lamp, a collection of Kannada short stories by Banu Mushtaq translated by Deepa Bhasthi has won the International Booker Prize. This is the first time a collection of short stories has been awarded the prize, it is also the first time that a work originally written in Kannada is a winner. Author Max Porter, Chair of the judges, announced the winners at a ceremony at London’s Tate Modern on Tuesday, 20 May 2025. The International Booker Prize recognises the vital work of translation, with the £50,000 prize money divided equally between the author and the translator. Mushtaq is only the second Indian author to win the International Booker Prize after Geetanjali Shree in 2022. Bhasthi is the first Indian translator to win the International Booker, Shree’s book Tomb of Sand was translated by US translator Daisy Rockwell. While Heart Lamp has been published by Penguin in India, Sheffield-based independent publisher And Other Stories published it first in the UK.

Written between 1990 and 2023, Heart Lamp’s 12 stories chronicle the lives of women and girls in patriarchal communities in southern India. Mushtaq, a lawyer and major voice within progressive Kannada literature, is a prominent champion of women’s rights and a protester against caste and religious oppression in India, and was inspired to write the stories by of women she met and heard from.

authorsBanu MushtaqBooker Prize 2025Deepa BhasthiNews BriefWeb Exclusive