In the lead up to the Galle Literary Festival we like to do some titles of authors due to attend so we are armed and ready for the session Q&A's! The latest attendee announcement was Banu Mushtaq and English translator Deepa Bhasthi, whose collection of short stories, Heart Lamp, won them the International Booker Prize 2025.
Banu Mushtaq is an Indian Kannada-language writer, activist, and lawyer from Karnataka. She wrote the stories in Heart Lamp across a 30 year period from 1990-2023 "from the belief that no story is ever small".
What's it about?
Heart Lamp is a peak into the lives of Muslim women and families in South India through a collection of short stories that explore gender, religion, caste and wealth. The tales steer away from the western stereotype of burqua’s and extremists instead delving into nuance observations of the Muslim community and oppression of women.
What did bookclub think? (Spoilers alert!)
Beyond the stories themselves, a stand-out feature of the book is the translation style, and that is where our conversation started. Translator Deepa Bhasthi, made an intentional decision to keep many Kanada and Arabic words in the text, as well as turns of phrase, with an ambition to immerse the reader into the culture. Some of our bookclub found this difficult to follow as they had to keep stopping to look up words, and confusing as sometimes the characters names changed throughout the text making it difficult to follow. More interestingly, this lead to a bigger discussion around the role of a translator: should the reader should be conscious of a translation or should a translator be “invisible” in a text? ? And should a translator have the power to decide that? Or the author?
Those more familiar with South Indian culture or Islamic practices certainly found it easier than those less familiar.
We unanimously agreed that the stories were devastating, depressing, heartbreaking and harrowing. Many of us were taken aback by the extreme patriachal communities that exist and struck by the very negative depiction of men who were seemingly uncaring, unsypathetic and often cruel to both women and children in every single story.
Many of the women often came across as unlikable too, however we all empathised with them, generally feeling that their unkindness had come out as a result of their opresseion. We drew some paralells to the manipulative aunties, some commenting that these characteristics feel quite close to home in Sri Lankan families too
A couple of the stories we discussed in more detail such as The Shroud, the story of a wealthy woman who is asked by a poor neighbour to bring her back a burial shroud (kafan) soaked in Zamzam water during her trip to Saudi on Hajj. She becomes distracted indulging in shopping and forgets, later returning to learn the neighbour has died without the shroud - she is consumed and tourmented by guilt. We agreed this was a great example of a nuance glimpse into the emotional dynamics of the religion and also found guilt to be common through many other religions
We all appreciated the dark humour in “Red Lungi”, a story where a young mother decides to get her boys and all the boys in the community circumsised in order to keep them restricted to their rooms during the school holidays.
Perhaps the stories that moved us all the most were those where the children were affected. In the heartbreaking story, Black Cobras, a mother of three daughters turns to the mutawalli for help after her husband leaves them for his second wife. The
But perhaps the most moving were the stories involving children. In the heartbreaking Black Cobras, a mother of three daughters turns to the local mutawalli for help after her husband abandons them for a second wife. Its a harrowing reality check of the helplessness of a mother, the quiet despair of the daughters, and the complete lack of support from the broader community.
Final Thoughts
Heart Lamp is not a comfortable read, nor is it trying to be. It’s a necessary look at lives that rarely feature in English language literature.
We’re looking forward to hearing both Banu Mushtaq and Deepa Bhasthi speak at Galle — especially to ask more about their collaborative process, the choices behind the translation, and whether the stories were ever met with backlash. This is the kind of book that lingers long after you’ve put it down — and one we’ll be recommending.