Heart Lamp, written by Banu Mushtaq and translated by Deepa Bhasthi, is the first story collection to win the International Booker Prize, given annually to a work of fiction translated into English and published in the U.K. or Ireland.
The book, published in April by the independent press And Other Stories, is a collection of 12 stories that center on the lives of girls and women living in southern India. It is the first International Booker Winner to be translated from Kannada, a language spoken in southwestern India.
Author Max Porter (Grief Is the Thing With Feathers), the chair of judges for this year’s award, 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. These beautiful, busy, life-affirming stories rise from Kannada, interspersed with the extraordinary sociopolitical richness of other languages and dialects. It speaks of women’s lives, reproductive rights, faith, caste, power and oppression.”
Accepting the award at a ceremony in London on Tuesday evening, Mushtaq said, “If I may borrow a phrase from my own culture, this moment feels like a thousand fireflies lighting up a single sky: brief, brilliant, and utterly collective. To even stand among these extraordinary finalists is an honor to me I will never forget.”
The International Booker Prize was established in 2005. Previous winners include The Vegetarian, written by Han Kang and translated by Deborah Smith; Flights, written by Olga Tokarczuk and translated by Jennifer Croft; and Kairos, written by Jenny Erpenbeck and translated by Michael Hofmann.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
