Overview

• On May 20 in London, Banu Mushtaq and translator Deepa Bhasthi jointly won the 2025 International Booker Prize for Heart Lamp, the first Kannada-language work to receive the honour.
• The Karnataka government will honour Mushtaq at a ceremony at Vidhana Soudha on June 2 following her public reception and felicitation in Bengaluru on May 28.
• Penguin Publishers reports a ₹6 crore profit from Heart Lamp and plans to translate the anthology into 35 languages to reach new audiences.
• Director Girish Kasaravalli's national award-winning film Hasina, adapted from the story 'Kari Nagaragalu', has spurred further inquiries for screen rights.
• The collection's 12 stories, written between 1990 and 2023, portray the resilience of Muslim women in southern India and critique patriarchal and religious conservatism.