India’s Banu Mushtaq and Deepa Bhasthi shortlisted for ‘Heart Lamp’

Kannada writer Banu Mushtaq and translator Deepa Bhasthi’s Heart Lamp: Selected Stories has made it to the shortlist of the 2025 International Booker Prize. It is the second book from India – after Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand, translated from the Hindi by Daisy Rockwell in 2022 – in the history of the prize to make the shortlist.

This year five novels and one collection of short stories are in the running. Heart Lamp was published by Penguin Random House India in India, and by And Other Stories in the UK, in April 2025. It is also the first time that all the books on the shortlist have been published by independent publishers. Nine out of 12 nominees are women, and three authors are in the finals with their debut English-language publications. Of the six books on the shortlist, only one is more than 200 pages.

This year’s jury is chaired by author Max Porter and the other judges are poet and photographer Caleb Femi; writer and Publishing Director of Wasafiri Sana Goyal; author and translator Anton Hur; and singer-songwriter Beth Orton. The judges picked their shortlist from a longlist of 13 books.

The jury said about Heart Lamp, “In the shortlist announcement, the jury said about the book, “In a dozen stories – written across three decades – Banu Mushtaq, a major voice within progressive Kannada literature – portrays the lives of those often on the periphery of society: girls and women in Muslim communities in southern India. These stories speak truth to power and slice through the fault lines of caste, class, and religion widespread in contemporary society, exposing the rot within: corruption, oppression, injustice, violence. Yet, at its heart, Heart Lamp returns us to the true, great pleasures of reading: solid storytelling, unforgettable characters, vivid dialogue, tensions simmering under the surface, and a surprise at each turn. Deceptively simple, these stories hold immense emotional, moral, and socio-political weight, urging us to dig deeper.”

The cash prize of £50,000 will be divided equally between the writer and translator. In addition, there is a prize of £5,000 for each of the shortlisted titles: £2,500 for the author and £2,500 for the translator.

The winner will be announced on May 20 at a ceremony at Tate Modern, London.

Here is the complete shortlist for this year’s prize:

• A Leopard-Skin Hat, Anne Serre, translated from the French by Mark Hutchinson, New Directions Publishing.

• Heart Lamp: Selected Stories, Banu Mushtaq, translated from Kannada by Deeba Bhasthi, And Other Stories.

• On the Calculation of Volume, Solvej Balle, translated from the Dutch by Barbara J Haveland, Faber and Faber.

• Perfection, Vincenzo Latronico, translated from the Italian by Sophie Hughes, Fitzcarraldo Editions.

• Small Boat, Vincent Delecroix, translated from French by Helen Stevenson, Peepal Tress Press.

• Under the Eye of the Big Bird, Hiromi Kawakami, translated from Japanese by Asa Yoneda, Granta Books.