Heart Lamp: Contemporary Kannada literature’s moment in the sun
The Kannadiga literary sphere hopes the International Booker Prize win will put the spotlight on Kannada literature and on Indian writing in general
The International Booker Prize win for Heart Lamp, a collection of short stories that Banu Mushtaq wrote in Kannada and Deepa Bhasthi translated into English, seems to have unleashed in the Kannada literary sphere an abundance of what Gautama the Buddha used to call mudita — our capacity to rejoice in the good fortune and well-being of others.
Vasudhendra thinks that this Booker win will open doors for other Kannada authors and translators. He says, “When Han Kang’s novel The Vegetarian, translated by Deborah Smith, got the prize in 2016, the entire publishing industry was drawn to Korean literature and started publishing more Korean writers. That might happen with Kannada as well.” He adds, however, that “trends last only for a while” but “good literature finds a way to survive.”
Srinath Perur, who headed the jury for the JCB Prize for Literature 2023 and has translated Girish Karnad and Vivek Shanbhag’s work from Kannada into English, celebrated the win by treating himself to some chocolate ice cream. He says, “The first effect of an Indian book doing well internationally is that we start taking it seriously in India.” He adds, “Prize-winning books become ambassadors for their literary cultures. I expect readers and publishers outside will take a little more notice of Kannada literature and Indian writing in general.”
Samvartha Sahil, who has translated Jacinta Kerketta, Nagraj Manjule and Yogesh Maitreya’s poetry into Kannada, believes that this moment gives “a certain kind of cultural confidence” to Kannadigas. He says, “I used to think of Kannada as the intimate space of home, and English as the courtyard that is open to engagement with the outside world. The global recognition that Heart Lamp has brought to Kannada literature has collapsed this binary for me.”
The main objective of the prize, as mentioned on their website, is to “encourage more reading of quality fiction from all over the world”, and writers of all nationalities are welcome to apply as long as their novels or short story collections are translated into English and published in the United Kingdom. Heart Lamp was published simultaneously by And Other Stories, an independent not-for-profit publisher in the UK, and Penguin Random House India. The prize money — a generous £50,000 — was divided equally between Mushtaq and Bhasthi.
Translator and novelist Anton Hur, who was on the jury for this year’s prize, says, “I do not think the verve and vigour of this book and translation could have been possible without the brilliant diversity and creative traditions of India as a whole.” He commends Bhasthi’s translation for “having the satisfying texture and astonishing beauty of raw silk, rough and smooth at the same time, in a way that richly rewards the reader who ventures beyond their comfort zone of flat and commercial Anglophone prose.” He adds, “I hope, by using this effective instrument we call the International Booker Prize, that we encourage readers to slow down a little to really take in the unexpected beauty of prose from other Englishes.”
He recalls that the judges were “enchanted by this experience of having lived so many and so different lives in the space of a very slim book”. He does not read, write or speak Kannada but Heart Lamp left an impression. He says, “Deepa captivated us, and Banu bewitched us.”
In a similar vein, Mushtaq’s acceptance speech called Heart Lamp her “love letter to the idea that no story is ‘local’.” She took pride in the fact that “a tale born under a banyan tree” in her village could “cast shadows” large enough to reach that international stage. She said, “To every reader who journeyed with me: you’ve made my Kannada language a shared home.”
Poet, translator and cultural critic Ranjit Hoskote, who is on the editorial board of the Murty Classical Library of India at Harvard University, views the win as a triumph against the “unexamined dogma” of agents and publishers who often discourage fiction writers from anthologizing their short fiction. He also draws attention to the fact that Mushtaq “is a woman, a Muslim, and a writer whose intellectual formation took place” within the Bandaya Sahitya movement of the 1970s and 80s”. He describes it as “a literary and cultural movement of protest and resistance that asserted itself against a more classicising, savarna-led, bourgeois-located modernist canon.” He contextualizes this moment by saying, “On every count, this win registers a departure from the norms of a society steadily buckling under toxic patriarchy, Hindu majoritarianism, and a tendency towards self-censorship.”
Fathima Raliya says, “As a Muslim girl and Kannada writer, I have always felt celebrated and appreciated in the Kannada literary world. However, I believe there is still a need for more inclusive representation. I firmly believe that a language and literary culture become richer when they receive diverse inputs from various sources and different backgrounds.”
Mushtaq’s writing is rooted in her feminism, journalistic work, grassroots activism, practice as a lawyer, and experiences as a wife, mother, and daughter-in-law negotiating patriarchy.
Samvartha Sahil adds, “Our society and state are invested in Islamophobia, which weaves narratives about Muslims as destructive people, and not creative beings. Banu Mushtaq’s win creates a dent in that narrative.” He appreciates the fact that Mushtaq’s work “does not lose sight of universalism” while being rooted in her own milieu. It is, he says, a reminder to “young writers and thinkers today, for whom identity politics has eclipsed universalism”.
The short stories that Bhasthi translated in Heart Lamp were selected out of six different short story collections that Mushtaq published between 1990 and 2023. Moutushi Mukherjee, Commissioning Editor, Fiction, Translations, and Classics at Penguin Random House India, recalls that she gravitated towards this collection over other translations submitted to her last year because of “the originality of its author’s voice and how fiercely she wanted to champion the women she wrote about”. She adds, “Deepa’s approach was respectful and quiet, but she brought a lot of conviction to her work. She didn’t hurry through it. Yet, she was steadfast and always happy to pitch in with ideas. All of this encouraged me to take this forward.”
In her essay To Translate with An Accent (2023) Bhasthi laments that the most widely recognised Kannada authors are men, and she “would redistribute some of this fame” if she could. With the International Booker Prize win, Bhasthi has fulfilled this cherished dream.
Susheela Punitha, who has translated stories by Hebbalalu Velapanuru Savithramma, Saraswathibai Rajawade, Shyamaladevi Belagaonkar, Nanjangudu Thirumalamba, Kodagina Gowramma, Triveni and Sara Aboobacker — all women writing in Kannada — for a new anthology titled A Teashop in Kamalapura and Other Classic Kannada Stories (2025), says, “I am happy for both Banu and Deepa. I had read quite a few of Banu’s stories before translating a few for a project that fell through. I have translated another story by her for the project that I am working on.” While she agrees that more men than women have found recognition, numbers don’t matter much to her. There have been well-known women writers who have made significant contributions to stories in Kannada, right from the earliest times.”
Mukherjee, however, hopes that the prize will help women writing in Kannada to push forth their work, and make publishers, literature festivals and award committees focus on them.
American translator Daisy Rockwell, who is an advisory board member to the South Asian Literature in Translation (SALT) project based out of the University of Chicago says, “I am sure that prior to the nomination from the International Booker Prize jury, Western readers were unaware that the language Kannada existed and if they heard someone speak of it, they probably thought they heard ‘Canada.’ As such, of course, it’s tremendous for Kannada, but also for spreading awareness that there are umpteen flourishing literary languages in the subcontinent, as well as legions of amazing up and coming translators.”
The translator’s note — Against Italics — at the end of Heart Lamp reminds readers that Kannada is spoken by an estimated 65 million people in the world. Rockwell, who won the International Booker Prize in 2022 for Tomb of Sand, her translation of Geetanjali Shree’s novel Ret Samadhi, adds, “Now that Banu and Deepa are in this spotlight, I am sure they will enlighten many readers about Kannada literature in general, and Muslim women’s stories in particular. They will help international readers expand their understanding of all the things Indian literature can be.” She hopes that Western publishers will become more open-minded about “bringing out voices from the margins and South Asian literature in translation”.
Chintan Girish Modi is a journalist, educator and literary critic. He can be reached @chintanwriting on Instagram and X.
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