Winning the International Booker Prize 2025 for Heart Lamp was like a thousand fireflies lighting up a single sky, said Banu Mushtaq as she accepted the award on Tuesday night in London.
Translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi, the book won the Booker from a list of six novels, which were shortlisted for the prize.
“If I may borrow a phrase from my own culture, this moment feels like a thousand fireflies lighting up a single sky — brief, brilliant and utterly collective. To even stand among these extraordinary finalists is an honour to me. I will never forget and I accept this great honour not as an individual but as a voice raised in chorus with so many others.”
Expressing gratitude to the Booker Prize committee, her team, translator, publishers, and readers, Mushtaq added: “This is more than a personal achievement. It is an affirmation that we as individuals and as a global community can thrive when we embrace diversity, celebrate our differences and uplift one another. Together we create a world where every voice is heard, every story matters and every person belongs.”
The author also thanked her literary agent Kanishka Gupta, publisher Penguin Random House, and her international publisher, And Other Stories, including its senior fiction editor and founder, Tara and Stefan Tobler.
“This is your victory too,” she said. “To write in Kannada is to inherit a legacy of cosmic wonder and early wisdom. This book was born from the belief that no story is ever small... in a world that often tries to divide us, literature remains one of the last sacred spaces where we can live inside each other’s minds — if only for a few pages.”
Mushtaq concluded with a note to her readers: “Tonight, it is not an end point, it is a torchpost. May it light the way for more stories from unheard corners, more translations that defy borders and more voices that remind us the universe fits inside every eye. Thank you, from the depths of my soul, thank you.”
Infosys Foundation founder-chairperson Sudha Murthy on Wednesday said that Banu Mushtaq's Booker Prize 2025 -- the first for a book originally written in Kannada -- is a double win for every Kannadiga woman.
"I feel extremely happy. As an Indian, I am happy. As a Kannada person, I am very happy. As an author I am very happy. And as a woman, I am even more happy. She is a great writer and this is a great beginning. Let many people like her get the Booker Prize in different languages," Murthy told PTI Videos.
Translator Deepa Bhasthi, said: “I’m not sure what just happened. I didn’t want to jinx the chances of winning by writing a speech… but then I knew if Heart Lamp was called, I would very likely freeze on stage and have the stage fright that I have never had in my life and make an utter fool of myself. So I dared to make some notes and that’s also why I am reading from my phone instead of from a nice piece of elegant paper.”
She titled her notes “Just in Case" and spoke on the significance: “The story of the world, if you really think about it, is a history of erasures. It is characterised by the effacement of women’s triumphs and the furtive rubbing away of the collective memory of how women and those on the many margins of this world live and love. This prize is a small win in a long ongoing battle against such violences.”
Highlighting the often-overlooked work of translators, Bhasthi said: “Elsewhere, there is erasure in the media and people’s understanding of works of literature, of translators and the work we do to bring what would otherwise be unread, uncelebrated texts to new and very different sets of readers.” She praised the International Booker for “celebrating and placing both writers and writer-translators on the same page so to speak.”
Bhasthi also thanked her parents, Sudha and Prakash. “They don’t always understand what I do or why I do what I do, but they cheer me on, nonetheless,” she said.
The £50,000 award was conferred on Tuesday evening, making Heart Lamp the first-ever collection of short stories to receive the prestigious honour.
This is the first time a work originally written in Kannada has been recognised by the International Booker Prize, with Bhasthi becoming the first Indian translator to win the award, according to the BBC.
The 12 stories in Heart Lamp, carefully selected from works penned by the 77-year-old lawyer and activist between 1990 and 2023, illuminate the everyday lives of Muslim girls and women.
Speaking to The Guardian, author and chair of judges Max Porter described the winning collection as “something genuinely new for English readers: a radical translation” of “beautiful, busy, life-affirming stories.”
