Indian author Banu Mushtaq wins International Booker Prize with short story collection

The Associated Press

· Posted: May 21, 2025 11:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 1 hr ago

Indian writer Banu Mushtaq and translator Deepa Bhasthi won the International Booker Prize for fabrication for Heart Lamp, a postulation of 12 abbreviated stories written implicit a play of much than 30 years and which chronicle the mundane lives and struggles of women successful confederate India.

The grant was announced by bestselling Booker Prize-longlisted writer Max Porter successful his relation arsenic seat of the five-member voting panel, astatine a ceremonial astatine London's Tate Modern.

The yearly grant celebrates the champion works of fabrication from astir the satellite that person been translated into English and published successful the U.K. oregon Ireland. The £50,000 (approx. $93,188 Cdn) expansive prize is divided arsenic betwixt writer and translator. There were nary Canadians nominated this year.

• The 2025 CBC Poetry Prize is present open

The prize was acceptable up to boost the illustration of fabrication successful different languages — which accounts for lone a tiny stock of books published successful Britain — and to salute the underappreciated enactment of literate translators.

It is the archetypal clip the International Booker Prize has been fixed to a postulation of abbreviated stories. Bhasthi is the archetypal Indian translator — and ninth pistillate translator — to triumph the prize since it took connected its existent signifier successful 2016. Mushtaq is the sixth pistillate writer to beryllium awarded the prize since then.

Written successful Kannada, which is spoken by astir 65 cardinal people, chiefly successful confederate India, Porter praised the "radical" quality of the translation, adding that "it's been a joy" to perceive to the evolving appreciation of the stories by members of the jury.

"These beautiful, busy, life-affirming stories emergence from Kannada, interspersed with the bonzer socio-political richness of different languages and dialects," said Porter. "It speaks of women's lives, reproductive rights, faith, caste, powerfulness and oppression."

The book, which bushed 5 different finalists, comprises stories written from 1990 to 2023. They were selected and curated by Bhasthi, who was keen to sphere the multilingual quality of confederate India successful her translation.

Mushtaq, who is simply a lawyer and activistic arsenic good arsenic writer, told a abbreviated database speechmaking lawsuit connected Sunday that the stories "are astir women – however religion, nine and authorities request unquestioning obedience from them, and successful doing so, inflict inhumane cruelty upon them, turning them into specified subordinates."

The prize wealth is to beryllium divided arsenic betwixt writer and translator. Each is presented with a trophy too.

Last year's victor was German writer Jenny Erpenbeck for Kairos, the communicative of a tangled emotion matter during the last years of East Germany's existence, translated by Michael Hofmann.

With files from CBC Books