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Heart Lamp: Selected Stories
Heart Lamp: Selected Stories | Banu Mushtaq
Longlisted for the 2025 International Booker PrizeWinner of the PEN Translates AwardA monumental first collection in English from Banu Mushtaq: lawyer, activist, champion of Muslim women, and winner of India's highest literary honors.In the twelve stories of Heart Lamp, Banu Mushtaq exquisitely captures the everyday lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India. Published originally in the Kannada language between 1990 and 2023, praised for their dry and gentle humor, these portraits of family and community tensions testify to Mushtaq's years as a journalist and lawyer, in which she tirelessly championed women's rights and protested all forms of caste and religious oppression. Written in a style at once witty, vivid, colloquial, moving and excoriating, it's in her characters--the sparky children, the audacious grandmothers, the buffoonish maulvis and thug brothers, the oft-hapless husbands, and the mothers above all, surviving their feelings at great cost--that Mushtaq emerges as an astonishing writer and observer of human nature, building disconcerting emotional heights out of a rich spoken style. Her opus has garnered both censure from conservative quarters as well India's most prestigious literary awards; this is a collection sure to be read for years to come.
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RaeLovesToRead
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Pickpick

Heart Lamp is a worthy winner of the International Booker Prize 2025.

Translated from Kannada, this is a collection of short stories centring the lives of Muslim women in India.

Most of them are splendid and showcase not only a warm writing talent, but also the layers of pain and hardship suffered in a patriarchal society.

There were only two that I felt lacked a point or direction.

Contemplative, human, heart-breaking.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

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TalesandTexts
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Tender & vulnerable, Heart Lamp explores the lives of Muslim women in rural Karnataka. But it isn‘t just a story of one community - rather it is the story of girls and women - the forced silences, the harsh hurts, the piercing dismissals and the painful denials that we women are made to confront, at the hands of the patriarchal societies we inhabit and the men in our lives.

These stories may seem simple - but they are real and universal.

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RaeLovesToRead
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I'm only 2 stories in, but they've both been brilliant so far.

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RaeLovesToRead
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Well my prediction couldn't have been more wrong!

Well done to Banu Mushtaq, Deepa Bhasthi and Heart Lamp for winning the International Booker Prize 2025!

I shall be giving it a read and reviewing it on my channel. If you want to hear my thoughts on the other nominees, I do a brief rundown in my prediction vid.

Every book on the shortlist was good 😊

BarbaraBB I agree! They all were good. And I didn‘t read the winner either 🤦🏻‍♀️ 2w
RaeLovesToRead @BarbaraBB I've just read the first story and I feel I may have underestimated it! Probably because the covers are so unappealing. I don't mind minimalist covers, but the text on the front and the monochrome doesn't work for me! 2w
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Tripex
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Hey, you've read it?

Suet624 Nope! I definitely will though. 2w
Tripex @Suet624 👏🏾 2w
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TalesandTexts
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So happy and proud this book won the Booker Prize 2025!

My country, my region and my beloved native language Kannada.

One of the oldest languages in the world - so glad other readers can get a taste of our language!

A poignant set of stories that explore the day to day lives of Muslim women ; and also capture the shared cultural legacies of Indian and South Asian women!

BarbaraBB Happy for you! I will read the book soon! 2w
TalesandTexts Happy reading! This book is so reminiscent of the places my mother and her parents grew up in; and the stories show the very real day-to-day lives of people my elders used to interact with. This book is a game changer to the Booker Prize and does away with the notion that only books form certain regions or certain types of translations should win. So glad the judges have opened up this space for more diverse voices! 1w
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vivastory
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Congrats to Mushtaq's Heart Lamp for winning the International Booker Prize! I have stopped following literary prize news the past couple of years for several reasons & it's something outside of the box to make me pay attention (ie: Everett's overdue Pulitzer this year) & now a short story collection! Although I have not read Mushtaq, some of the best fiction I have read over the past few years has been story collections & this is long overdue!

BarbaraBB I had read all of the shortlist except for this one. I now really want to read it. 2w
vivastory @BarbaraBB Out of curiosity, what book were you rooting for? 2w
sarahbarnes I‘m on the hold list for this collection at the library and now even more excited to read it! I wasn‘t expecting it to win. 2w
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Graywacke
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Another book I‘ve been reading from the International #Booker longlist. Originally written in Kannadan, it‘s a muslim-Indian perspective. It‘s been terrific so far. #IB2025

BarbaraBB It‘s the only one on the shortlist I haven‘t read yet. 3w
Graywacke @BarbaraBB Im impressed. It‘s a slower read than you might expect. But very enjoyable 3w
BarbaraBB I will be looking for a copy! 3w
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