Banu Mushtaq’s Kannada short story collection ‘Heart Lamp’ on International Booker Prize shortlist
London, Apr 9 (PTI): Karnataka-based writer, activist and lawyer Banu Mushtaq’s short story collection ‘Heart Lamp’, translated from Kannada to English by Deepa Bhasthi, was on Tuesday shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025 in London.
It marks the first time a Kannada title has made it this far in the race for the coveted GBP 50,000 literary prize – divided between author and translator.
Shortlisted among six worldwide titles, Mushtaq’s work appealed to the judges for its “witty, vivid, colloquial, moving and excoriating” style of capturing portraits of family and community tensions.
“Stories about encroaching modernity, as told through the lives of Muslim women in southern India. An invigorating reading experience,” reads the judges’ reason for including it on the shortlist.
The 12 stories, published originally between 1990 and 2023, will now go head-to-head with authors from across the world.
“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,” Mushtaq said in a statement.
“The daily incidents reported in the 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. I do not engage in extensive research; my heart itself is my field of study,” she said.
The book’s translator, Deepa Bhasthi, added: “For me, translation is an instinctive practice, and 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.”
In a statement, Penguin Random House India said, "This achievement marks a historic moment, with Heart Lamp becoming one of the very few Kannada-language works to be recognised at this level".
Moutushi Mukherjee, Penguin Commissioning Editor who worked on the book, said, "To see Heart Lamp on the International Booker shortlist is an extraordinary affirmation of the power of Indian regional literature and the importance of translation".
The annual prize celebrates the best works of long-form fiction or collections of short stories translated into English and published in the UK and/or Ireland between May 2024 and April 2025.
The other five books shortlisted from the longlist for this year’s prize are: ‘On the Calculation of Volume I’ by Solvej Balle, translated from Danish by Barbara J. Haveland; ‘Small Boat’ by Vincent Delecroix, translated from French by Helen Stevenson; ‘Under the Eye of the Big Bird’ by Hiromi Kawakami, translated from Japanese by Asa Yoneda; ‘Perfection’ by Vincenzo Latronico, translated from Italian by Sophie Hughes; and ‘A Leopard-Skin Hat’ by Anne Serre, translated from French by Mark Hutchinson.
Max Porter, International Booker Prize 2025 Chair of judges, said: “This list is our celebration of fiction in translation as a vehicle for pressing and surprising conversations about humanity. These mind-expanding books ask what might be in store for us, or how we might mourn, worship or survive. They offer knotty, sometimes pessimistic, sometimes radically hopeful answers to these questions.
“Taken together they build a miraculous lens through which to view human experience, both the truly disturbing and the achingly beautiful. They are each highly specific windows onto a world, but they are all gorgeously universal.”
Each shortlisted title is awarded a prize of GBP 5,000 – shared between author and translator – and the announcement of the 2025 winning title will take place May 20 at a ceremony at Tate Modern in London, with the winning author receiving GBP 25,000 and the translator or translators dividing the other half of GBP 25,000.
In 2022, Geetanjali Shree and translator Daisy Rockwell won the coveted prize for the first-ever Hindi novel ‘Tomb of Sand’, with Perumal Murugan’s Tamil novel ‘Pyre’, translated into English by Aniruddhan Vasudevan making it to the longlist in 2023.
Fiammetta Rocco, Administrator of the International Booker Prize, adds: “With all six books on the list published by independents for the first time, I'd like to thank the publishers for their ongoing commitment to bringing so many original and exciting international writers and translators to English language readers.
“Their passion, along with that of the many booksellers and librarians championing global writing, has no doubt helped to fuel a very welcome boom in translated fiction in the UK and Ireland.”
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Baramati plane crash: Rohit Pawar alleges attempts to shield VSR Ventures
Mumbai (PTI): NCP (SP) MLA Rohit Pawar on Wednesday alleged that someone was trying to save VSR Ventures in connection with the plane crash that killed Maharashtra deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar, and claimed that the AAIB preliminary probe vindicated the doubts earlier raised by him.
He also accused VSR company of indulging in several grave lapses in the past.
The Learjet 45 aircraft, operated by VSR Ventures, crashed near the Baramati air strip in Pune district on January 28, killing Pawar and four others.
In its 22-page preliminary report on the VSR Venture's Learjet plane crash, the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) said the visibility at the time of the crash was below the required level. It also flagged about fading marks on the runway and presence of loose gravels on the runway surface.
Pawar said, "I am not against VSR or the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). Ajitdada was travelling in a VSR aircraft. Unless we go into the depth of every aspect, we will not know the truth. But someone is trying to save this company. The doubts we had raised have been proven correct in the inquiry report."
He also claimed that the AAIB report contained discrepancies, including mentioning Baramati as a district, and questioned how seriously the probe had been conducted.
Pawar, who has been regularly holding press conferences to raise issues concerning the Baramati plane crash, also contested the report's conclusion that the aircraft hit trees before crashing.
"The report says the aircraft struck trees and then fell. But there are no trees at that spot. There is only a small bush which the aircraft did not even touch. What is stated in the report about hitting trees is incorrect," he said.
Pawar further alleged that VSR Ventures had displayed irresponsibility on multiple occasions, citing an incident involving the then chief minister Eknath Shinde's Davos visit on January 20, 2023.
He claimed that the aircraft carrying Shinde had entered Iranian and Iraqi airspace without overflight permission, following which fighter jets from the two countries allegedly warned of action, forcing a change in route from Bahrain to Zurich.
"There have been several such grave lapses by VSR," he said.
Pawar demanded to know from where VSR Ventures derived its "audacity", and sought details about its investors and officials, though he added that he was not personally concerned with who they were.
Drawing a comparison, he said the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had taken over the probe into actor Sushant Singh Rajput's death within two days, whereas a month had passed since the Baramati crash without a similar action.
He claimed that VSR Ventures had two directors and three shareholders, and that there were eight common names across two related companies.
He further alleged that the owner of VSR was related to the Union Civil Aviation Minister and questioned why the company, though registered in Delhi, had made high-value investments in Jubilee Hills (upscale area in Hyderabad) at rates allegedly Rs 17 crore above the market price.
The MLA representing the Karjat-Jamkhed assembly constituency in Ahilyanagar district also raised concerns about the legal and institutional framework of the AAIB under the 2017 rules, claiming it was neither a statutory nor an autonomous body and remained answerable to the secretary and the minister, besides being attached to the DGCA.
"There is no independent investigative agency," he alleged.
