An extract from Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated by Deepa Bhasthi
In 12 stories, Banu Mushtaq exquisitely captures the everyday lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India
An interview with Banu Mushtaq and Deepa Bhasthi, author and translator of Heart Lamp
With Heart Lamp shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025, we spoke to its author and translator about the inspirations behind the book, and why translation is an instinctive practice
Banu Mushtaq
The inspirations behind Heart Lamp, and how I wrote it
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 incidence affects me, the more deeply and emotionally I write.
The book that made me fall in love with reading
Rather than naming a single book, I have been influenced by an immense number of books. Ever since I learned to write the alphabet as a child, I have been writing.
The book that made me want to become a writer
The 1970s was a decade of movements in Karnataka – the Dalit movement, farmers’ movement, language movement, rebellion movement, women’s struggles, environmental activism, and theatre, activities among others, had a profound impact on me. My direct engagement with the lives of marginalised communities, women, and the neglected, along with their expressions, gave me the strength to write. Overall, the social conditions of Karnataka shaped me.
The book that changed the way I think about the world
No single book has dictated my life and writing. Instead, numerous books and experiences have given me a renewed sense of life.
Banu Mushtaq
I do not engage in extensive research; my heart itself is my field of study
Deepa Bhasthi
The inspiration and process behind my translation of Heart Lamp
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, so – and I cannot quite explain how doing this helped me – I only experienced art that was either set in or was about the milieu that she writes about. 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.
The book that made me fall in love with reading
I’ve been around books my entire life, and cannot quite pin my interest in literature down to one book, but perhaps it springs from my grandmother who used to live with us. She raised me on stories, two-three a day, more if I begged her enough. When telling stories she became the characters, changing her voice, speaking in gestures and facial contortions. I was mesmerised. I still am, when I think of her. She is who made me want to tell stories, both as a writer and a translator. I wanted to try to replicate in readers the sense of wonder her narration evoked in me, and I hope to do with the written word what she so effortlessly used to do with her hands and face and body.
The translator whose work I always look out for
Jayasree Kalathil, who translates from the Malayalam into English. The books she translates, often by debut writers in the language, are always inventive in form and style. I always end up learning some new writing trick from how she practices translation.
The book I’m reading at the moment
I’m always reading something or other by Kuvempu, who, to Kannada literature is what Shakespeare or Austen or Woolf are to the English language. This time, I’m rereading his magnum opus Malegalalli Madhumagalu, which, in my opinion, is a foundational text in Kannada. The novel was recently published in an English translation by Vanamala Viswanatha. I’ve also just started Mohammed El-Kurd’s Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal, and it is of course brilliant, and necessary reading for our times.
Deepa Bhasthi
A work of fiction originally written in Arabic that I’d recommend to English-language readers
From 2014, when I was first introduced to Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry, I’ve been greatly drawn to Arabic literature. Some day I’ve promised myself that I’ll read all my favourites in the original. I’ve read everything by Ghassan Zaqtan and Naguib Mahfouz that’s available in English translation. But if I was forced to pick just one, I’d choose a recent favourite: Jabbour Douaihy’s Firefly, translated by Paula Haydar and Nadine Sinno. Set mostly in Beirut, it follows the life of a young man who tries to navigate college, friendships, love and adventures and hold on to some semblance of normalcy in the middle of the violence of the Lebanese Civil War in the early 1970s. I loved the evocative word pictures Douaihy creates in the story, especially his metaphors involving fireflies. The fact that it is largely set in Beirut, one of my favourite cities, makes it an unforgettable book for me.
The International Booker-nominated book everyone should read
Robert Seethaler’s A Whole Life, translated by Charlotte Collins, is one of my all-time favourite books. I love the quietness of the novel, and I love how the beauty of everyday people and ordinary lives is so gracefully conveyed, that too so pithily.
Why is translated fiction so appealing to a new generation of English-language readers?
I wonder if this has something to do with social media and how exposed (even if superficially) everyone is to influences from other cultures. So many people below 35 have pretty much lived their entire lives online. Perhaps this awareness of the whole world reduced to their small screens also makes it easier for them to be open to literature from different languages and cultures. Plus, like Anton Hur says, reading translated fiction makes you sexy! Which under-35 person wouldn’t want to be sexy?
Firefly by Jabbour Douaihy
As Anton Hur says, reading translated fiction makes you sexy! Which under-35 person wouldn’t want to be sexy?
