With the 2025 International Booker Prize shortlist out, Banu Mushtaq’s ‘Heart Lamp’, translated into English from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi, has gained recognition, primarily, for the reason that it is a regional novel. Owing to this, it has brought Kannada literature into the limelight. Mushtaq, a renowned Kannada writer and lawyer also known for her activism through poignant selection, has inked the quotidian lives of Muslim women in Southern India.

‘Heart Lamp’, a short-story collection, is a blend of humour and critique. She emerged in the literary scene in the 70s and the 80s with the Bandaya Sahitya Movement, challenging class, caste and social inequality on multiple levels. Though it’s a historic moment for Kannada literature, the reverberation of a glowing literary future has been felt since UR Ananthamurthy’s Samskara (2013). Set in stone, it has been selected out of 154 submissions worldwide.

A thousand women live, and a thousand die simultaneously in this incredibly powerful and beautiful book. I can say, I have reached a certain point where I’m able to experience the joys, sorrows, grief, confusion, pain and multitude of emotions that one finds hard to pen but can only feel. I have fully realised the condition of being a woman, and this book spares none of the painful reality.

I took my time to read this book, although it doesn’t seem to have a plot. It’s a collection of short stories,s with each independent of the others. Still, I started with page one out of habit, assuming that the first few chapters would be light. But I was gratefully wrong, and each story took my breath away. I was spellbound by its simplicity in picking mundane incidents, yet it had the potential of being unique. Starkly Indian, unabashedly regional and culturally distinct. I came closer to a community of women - pious, proud and passionate Muslims.

Women at the centre of apathetic men and at times hapless, sometimes locking horns with their own gender pool out of jealousy, might be a product of the author’s imagination, but are not at all fictional in my opinion. I found every single character real.

The translator doesn’t camouflage words with an English equivalent. By not italicising the local dialect, Deepa Bhasti is responsibly aware of the cultural bearing each word and phrase carries. My deepest gratitude also extends to the agent, Kanishka Gupta, for bringing this book to light.

The audacity of Banu’s voice gives works in translation a sense of belonging. Its Indianness can’t be missed. Feel like celebrating works in translation? You have the magic right here.

Mushtaq, at 77, has several feathers on her hat. By now, she has penned six short stories, a collection of essays and poetry. Her gamut of works had her receive the Karnataka Sahitya Akademi and Danna Chintamani Attimabbe awards. Previously, her works had been translated into other regional languages in India like Urdu, Malayalam, Hindi and Tamil. The cultural impact of ‘Heart Lamp’ is considerable enough in bringing the marginalised voices from South Asia to the centre.

For 33 years, from 1990 to 2023, Banu wrote ‘Heart Lamp’. It’s a collection of 12 short stories on Muslim and Dalit women. It is a testament to the firebrand writer’s resistance to patriarchy, class, caste and dogmatic views. Her stories have been adapted into films and published in magazines like The Baffler and The Paris Review.