The shortlist for this year’s International Booker Prize, includes Kannada author Banu Mushtaq. The IBP shortlist, which celebrates the best works of long-form fiction or collections of short stories translated into English, was announced April 8, 2025.
Comprised of five novels and one collection of short stories, the six ‘mind-expanding books’ – which Chair of the 2025 judges Max Porter described as a ‘vehicle for pressing and surprising conversations about humanity’ – are as follows:
- On the Calculation of Volume Iby Solvej Balle, translated from Danish by Barbara J. Haveland
- Small Boatby Vincent Delecroix, translated from French by Helen Stevenson
- Under the Eye of the Big Birdby Hiromi Kawakami, translated from Japanese by Asa Yoneda
- Perfectionby Vincenzo Latronico, translated from Italian by Sophie Hughes
- Heart Lampby Banu Mushtaq, translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi
- A Leopard-Skin Hatby Anne Serre, translated from French by Mark Hutchinson
Mushtaq is a writer, activist and lawyer in Karnataka. She began writing within the progressive protest literary circles in the 1970s and 1980s, according to the bio provided by Booker on their website. Her writing revolved around the caste and class system. “The Bandaya Sahitya movement gave rise to influential Dalit and Muslim writers of whom Mushtaq was one of the few women,” Booker noted. She is the author of six short story collections, a novel, an essay collection and a poetry collection. She writes in Kannada and has won several prestigious awards. Heart Lamp is the first book-length translation of her work into English. It has already been translated into Urdu, Hindi, Tamil and Malayalam. One of the stories from this short story book was published in the Paris Review.
Heart Lamp is translated into English by Deepa Bhasthi.
