Banu Mushtaq

Mushtaq began writing within the progressive protest literary circles in southwestern India in the 1970s and 1980s: critical of the caste and class system, the Bandaya Sahitya movement gave rise to influential Dalit and Muslim writers, of whom Mushtaq was one of the few women. She is the author of six short story collections, a novel, an essay collection and a poetry collection. She writes in Kannada and has won major awards for her literary works, including the Karnataka Sahitya Academy and the Daana Chintamani Attimabbe awards. Heart Lamp is the first book-length translation of her work into English, having been translated into Urdu, Hindi, Tamil and Malayalam. One of the stories from Heart Lamp has been published in the Paris Review. The book was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025.