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Heart Lamp: Banu Mushtaq wins Booker Prize for Kannada short story collection

This is the second Indian book to win the international booker prize in three years after Geetanjali Shree and translator Daisy Rockwell won the 2022 award

Published on: May 21, 2025, 06:15:29 IST

By Dhrubo Jyoti, New Delhi

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Banu Mushtaq wrote her first short story when she was in middle school in Karnataka’s Hassan town in the 1950s. That journey came full circle on Wednesday as the 77-year-old writer, lawyer and activist scripted history by winning the international booker prize along with her translator Deepa Bhasthi, becoming the first Kannada writer to clinch the prestigious award.

Kannada writer-lawyer-activist Banu Mushtaq has won the International Booker prize for the short story anthology, Heart Lamp. ((X/KiranKS))

The winning book, Heart Lamp – a collection of 12 short stories written over a period of 30 years that exquisitely captured

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

...Read MoreDhrubo Jyoti is Deputy Executive Editor at Hindustan Times, where they help oversee the newspaper’s daily news and opinion coverage. They are part of the leadership team of the newspaper and their daily responsibilities include news selection, commissioning and editing, apart from planning and executing special projects. Apart from this, they write on national affairs at the intersection of caste and sexuality, with a focus on elections, politics and the lifeworlds of the caste marginalised. Formally trained in physics from St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata and Bose Institute, Kolkata, they made a switch to studying journalism from the Asian College of Journalism in Chennai. Over the past decade at Hindustan Times, they have worked at the National Desk, Page 1 team, Integrated Copy Desk and Special Stories Team, before running the opinion page as views editor for two years, and then moving back as Senior Editor of News Operations. In the past 12 years, they have reported on numerous national and state elections, specialising on caste-informed coverage of major moments in India’s history, and focussing on leading investigations into government accountability and social inequities. Their narrative non-fiction work aims to put Dalit voices at the core of India’s LGBTQIA+ movements. Read Less

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Home/India News/Heart Lamp: Banu Mushtaq wins Booker Prize for Kannada short story collection

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