GULFWEEKLY: Heart Lamp: Selected Stories by Indian activist, lawyer and writer Banu Mushtaq has bagged this year’s International Booker Prize.
Translated by Deepa Bhasthi, the 12 stories written between 1990 and 2023 tackle the everyday lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India, shedding light on a variety of themes, including class divide, cultural disconnection and generational trauma, in a manner that is witty and humourous, yet moving and excoriating.
“My stories are about women, how society demands unquestioning obedience from them, and in doing so, inflicts inhumane cruelty upon them, turning them into mere subordinates,” Banu said.
Released last month, Heart Lamp is the first short story collection and the first Kannada language translation to win the prize.
Deepa explained that her approach to translating the book was not to turn the language into proper English, but rather to introduce the reader to new words.
“I call it translating with an accent,” she said.
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