Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated by Deepa Bhasthi, wins the International Booker Prize 2025

• Heart Lamp is the first collection of short stories to win the prize – written over 30 years, the 12 stories chronicle the lives of women in patriarchal communities in southern India  
• Lawyer and women’s rights activist Banu Mushtaq is the second Indian author to win the prize  
• Deepa Bhasthi becomes the first Indian translator to win the prize, and describes her process for Heart Lamp as ‘translating with an accent’ 
• Heart Lamp is the first winner of the International Booker Prize to be translated from Kannada, a major language spoken by an estimated 65 million people  
• Mushtaq was inspired to write the stories by those who came to her seeking help. She said: ‘The pain, suffering, and helpless lives of these women create a deep emotional response within me, compelling me to write.’  
• The winning book, Heart Lamp, ‘is something genuinely new for English readers: a radical translation’ of ‘beautiful, busy, life-affirming stories’, according to Max Porter, Chair of the 2025 judges 
• Sheffield-based independent publisher And Other Stories wins for the first time 
• Everything you need to know about the winner of the International Booker Prize 2025

Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi, is tonight, Tuesday, 20 May, named the 2025 winner of the International Booker Prize, the world’s most influential award for translated fiction. The winning book, the first collection of short stories to be awarded the prize, was announced by bestselling Booker Prize-longlisted author Max Porter, Chair of the 2025 judges, at a ceremony in the Turbine Hall at London’s Tate Modern. The International Booker Prize recognises the vital work of translation, with the £50,000 prize money divided equally between the author and the translator. Each received a trophy, presented by Porter. 

Highlights of the evening included a special music performance of ‘Pass in Time’ by award-winning singer-songwriter Beth Orton, who is a judge for the 2025 prize, and a screening of six short films starring critically-acclaimed actors Lucy Boynton, Jamie Demetriou, Omari Douglas, Rosalind Eleazar, and Peter Serafinowicz performing extracts from the shortlisted books, with the winning title read by Ambika Mod. The announcement of the winner was shared with a global audience via a livestream on the Booker Prizes’ YouTube, Instagram and TikTok channels. The YouTube livestream can be watched here. The event also featured red-carpet interviews with high-profile guests by comedian Suzi Ruffell, for the Booker Prizes’ social accounts.  

The winning collection of 12 short stories chronicles the resilience, resistance, wit, and sisterhood of everyday women in patriarchal communities in southern India, vividly brought to life through a rich tradition of oral storytelling. From tough, stoic mothers to opinionated grandmothers, from cruel husbands to resilient children, the female characters in the stories endure great inequities and hardships but remain defiant.   

Winning author Mushtaq, a lawyer and major voice within progressive Kannada literature, is a prominent champion of women’s rights and a protester against the caste and class system in India. She was inspired to write the stories by the experiences of women who came to her seeking help. The stories in Heart Lamp, which is the first winner of the International Booker Prize to be translated from Kannada, spoken by an estimated 65 million people, 38 million as a first language, were written by Mushtaq over a period of 30+ years, from 1990 to 2023. They were selected and curated by Bhasthi, who was keen to preserve the multi-lingual nature of southern India. When the characters use Urdu or Arabic words in conversation, these are left in the original, reproducing the unique rhythms of spoken language. 

‘Heart Lamp, stories written by a great advocate of women’s rights over three decades and translated with sympathy and ingenuity, should be read by men and women all over the world. The book speaks to our times, and to the ways in which many are silenced. 

‘In a divided world, a younger generation is increasingly connecting with global stories that have been skilfully reworked for English-language readers through the art of translation. Since 2016, the International Booker Prize has promoted the world’s best writing in translation, and it’s been fantastic that this year’s nominated titles have come to life through our “A feast of fiction from around the world” campaign, which we’ve been delighted to see projected through new and returning collaborations with cultural venues, festivals, booksellers and content creators.  

‘Next year the prize celebrates ten years in its current form, and I am optimistic that the anniversary will lead more people to discover and embrace great translated fiction.’ 

‘Being a lawyer, activist and a writer, I witness [this] day to day, in my daily life, because so many women come to me. They have brought all the problems with them. They seek relief. But some of the women, they don’t know why they are suffering.’ – Banu Mushtaq in an interview for the International Booker Prize 2025 Shortlist Readings event at the Southbank Centre on Sunday, 18 May 

‘My stories are about women – how religion, society, and politics demand unquestioning obedience from them, and in doing so, inflict inhumane cruelty upon them, turning them into mere subordinates. The daily incidents reported in media and the personal experiences I have endured have been my inspiration. The pain, suffering, and helpless lives of these women create a deep emotional response within me, compelling me to write.  

‘Stories for the Heart Lamp collection were chosen from around 50 stories in six story collections I wrote between 1990 and later. Usually, there will be a single draft, and the second one will be a final copy. I do not engage in extensive research; my heart itself is my field of study. The more intensely the incidents affect me, the more deeply and emotionally I write.’ – Mushtaq in an interview for the Booker Prizes website 

‘For me, translation is an instinctive practice in many ways, and I have found that each book demands a completely different process. With Banu’s stories, I first read all the fiction she had published before I narrowed it down to the ones that are in Heart Lamp. I was lucky to have a free hand in choosing what stories I wanted to work with, and Banu did not interfere with the organised chaotic way I went about it.   

‘I was very conscious of the fact that I knew very little about the community she places her stories in. Thus, during the period I was working on the first draft, I found myself immersed in the very addictive world of Pakistani television dramas, music by old favourites like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Ali Sethi, Arooj Aftab and others, and I even took classes to learn the Urdu script. I suppose these things somehow helped me get under the skin of the stories and the language she uses.’ – Deepa Bhasthi in an interview for the Booker Prizes website 

‘When one translates, the aim is to introduce the reader to new words, in this case, Kannada … I call it translating with an accent, which reminds the reader that they are reading a work set in another culture, without exoticising it, of course. So the English in Heart Lamp is an English with a very deliberate Kannada hum to it’ – Deepa Bhasthi in an interview with Scroll.in 

Read the full interviews with the Booker Prizes website here 

‘Mushtaq’s compassion and dark humour give texture to her stories. These deceptively simple tales decry the subjugation of women while celebrating their resilience. Bhasthi’s nuanced translation retains several Kannada, Urdu and Arabic words, eloquently conveying the language’s enduring tradition of oral storytelling’ – Lucy Popescu, Financial Times  

‘Though the International Booker Prize is not the first time Mushtaq’s work is up for celebration—’Kari Nagaragalu’, her story about a Muslim woman deserted by her husband, was adapted into a film in 2003 and earned the lead a National Film Award for Best Actress—recognition by a wider audience for this major literary voice is long overdue’. – Kanika Sharma, Vogue India 

‘The flexibility of the prize – it’s not just for novels – is exemplified in Banu Mushtaq’s collection of stories, Heart Lamp. This wonderful collection would be a worthy winner, though history is against it: stories have never taken the prize before’ – John Self, the Guardian 

The International Booker Prize continues to build in global importance each year. As the 2025 winners, Banu Mushtaq and Deepa Bhasthi can expect a worldwide readership and a significant increase in profile and sales, including in the author’s home country of India.  

The announcement of the 2024 winner, Kairos, written by Jenny Erpenbeck and translated from German by Michael Hofmann, was reported in over 2,500 news articles around the world.  

According to Granta Books, the UK publisher of Kairos, sales of the paperback increased by 442% in the week after winning the International Booker Prize 2024. Prior to the winner announcement in May 2024, it had sold 10,000 copies across all editions; since, it has sold nearly 80,000 copies. Granta Books has sold 30,000 of these copies through UK retailers, a 17% increase in sales of the 2023 winner over the same period. Prior to its longlisting, translation rights to Kairos had been sold to 16 territories; that has now increased to 33 territories.  

In Germany, Erpenbeck and Hofmann’s home country, the original edition of Kairos sold out at many booksellers the day after its win, rising to the top 20 of the bestseller lists in all editions and reaching number 1 in paperback for the first time since publication. Its German publisher Penguin Verlag reports that before it had won the International Booker Prize in May 2024, it had sold just over 50,000 copies across all editions since its publication in 2021; in June 2024, the month after its win, it sold more than 90,000 copies. It has now sold over 230,000 copies.  

The prize has helped to drive a boom in translated fiction in the UK, with print sales in 2023 reaching a record £26m, up by 12% on the previous year, according to Nielsen BookData. This is largely down to younger readers, with almost half of translated fiction in the UK bought by under-35s. According to the Bookseller, translated fiction sales have doubled since the International Booker Prize launched in its current form nine years ago, with ‘roughly £1 in every £8 spent through NielsenIQ BookScan’s Fiction category over the past year … on a translated title’. The prize’s influence also extends to other awards, with four authors recognised by the International Booker Prize since 2016 going on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. 

Since being published on the Booker Prizes social media platforms on 22 April, the International Booker Prize 2025 shortlist films have been viewed over 37 million times. All six films can be watched here. The Booker Prize Foundation has created the series of six two-minute films featuring well-known actors for its two annual prizes since 2022. The films, released in spring and autumn, have become one of the highlights of the International Booker Prize and the Booker Prize seasons, with the 2024 films for both prizes viewed online more than 83 million times.  

This year, the Booker Prize Foundation launched a marketing campaign for the prize, ‘A feast of fiction from around the world’, which features a series of engaging videos to introduce readers to the nominated books and the judges. Watch here.  

Winner event at Foyles, Charing Cross Road, London  

The International Booker Prize 2025 winning author and translator will appear in their first public event after the announcement, in conversation with Booker Prize-longlisted author Tash Aw at Foyles’ flagship Charing Cross Road store. 

Where: Foyles, 107 Charing Cross Road, London, WC2H 0DT 

When: Thursday 22 May 2025, 7.00pm 

Tickets: £8-10, available here 

Winner event at Hay Festival 

Booker Prize Foundation Chief Executive Gaby Wood will be joined by one of this year’s judges, author and International Booker Prize-shortlisted translator, Anton Hur, in conversation with the winning author and translator of the International Booker Prize 2025.  

Where: Wye Stage, Hay Festival, Dairy Meadows, Brecon Road, Hay-on-Wye, HR3 5PJ 

When: Saturday 24 May 2025, 2.30pm 

Tickets: £13, available here 

Winner event at Edinburgh International Book Festival 

International Booker Prize Administrator Fiammetta Rocco will be joined by one of this year’s judges, writer and Publishing Director of Wasafiri, Sana Goyal, and the winning author and translator of the International Booker Prize 2025, as they discuss their book and the art of translation.  

Where: Edinburgh Futures Institute, The University of Edinburgh, 1 Lauriston Pl, Edinburgh EH3 9EF 

When: Friday, 15 August 2025, 12:15pm 

Tickets: Available from 21 June 

Premier: [email protected] / Hannah Stockton +44 (0)77 8070 5086