Indian title Heart Lamp wins the International Booker Prize 2025

Banu Mushtaq’s short story collection Heart Lamp, translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi and published by Penguin Random House, has been awarded the International Booker Prize 2025. This is the first time that a Kannada translation and an Indian origin translator has won the prestigious award. The book also received the English PEN Translation Award in 2024.

This achievement marks a historic moment, with Heart Lamp becoming one of the very few Kannada-language works to be recognised at this level. It is also a significant milestone for Indian literature in translation and for Penguin, following the 2022 win for Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree and the 2023 longlisting of Pyre by Perumal Murugan.

Originally written in Kannada, Heart Lamp explores the complexities of womanhood, love, loss, and the weight of tradition in contemporary South India. The stories are deeply rooted yet universally resonant, making this collection a moving and unforgettable literary experience.

The 2025 judging panel is chaired by Max Porter, acclaimed author of Grief Is the Thing with Feathers and Lanny, with poet and filmmaker Caleb Femi, writer and Publishing Director of Wasafiri Sana Goyal, Booker Prizeshortlisted translator Anton Hur, and singer-songwriter Beth Orton completing the panel.

Max Porter, Chair of the International Booker Prize 2025 judges, said, “Heart Lamp is something genuinely new for English readers. A radical translation which ruffles language, to create new textures in a plurality of Englishes. It challenges and expands our understanding of translation.” Banu Mushtaq is a writer, women’s rights activist and lawyer in the state of Karnataka, southern India. She began writing within the progressive protest literary circles in southwestern India in the 1970s and 1980s. Critical of the caste and class system, the Bandaya Sahitya movement gave rise to influential Dalit and Muslim writers, of whom Mushtaq was one of the few women.

While, Deepa Bhasthi is a writer and literary translator based in Kodagu, southern India. Bhasthi’s columns, essays and cultural criticism have been published in India and internationally. Her published translations from Kannada include a novel by Kota Shivarama Karanth and a collection of short stories by Kodagina Gouramma.