Overview

• Banu Mushtaq's 'Heart Lamp' is the first Kannada-language work and first short story collection to win the International Booker Prize.
• The £50,000 prize is shared equally between Mushtaq and translator Deepa Bhasthi, who is the first Indian translator to win the award.
• The collection features 12 stories written between 1990 and 2023, portraying the lives of women in patriarchal southern Indian communities.
• Judges praised the translation as 'radical,' introducing new textures to English and preserving the multilingual essence of the original Kannada work.
• This marks the second Indian language title to win the prize, following Geetanjali Shree's 'Tomb of Sand' in 2022.