Tue May 20 22:21:21 UTC 2025: **FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE**
**Kannada Author Banu Mushtaq Wins International Booker Prize for ‘Heart Lamp’**
**LONDON, May 21, 2025** – Banu Mushtaq, a writer, activist, and lawyer, has become the first Kannada author to win the prestigious International Booker Prize for her short story collection, ‘Heart Lamp.’ The GBP 50,000 prize was awarded at a ceremony at the Tate Modern in London on Tuesday night. Mushtaq will share the prize money with her translator, Deepa Bhasthi, who translated the title from Kannada to English.
Judges praised Mushtaq’s “witty, vivid, colloquial, moving and excoriating” style in capturing portraits of family and community tensions. ‘Heart Lamp’ was selected from a shortlist of six international titles.
Mushtaq described her win as a victory for diversity, stating, “This book was born from the belief that no story is ever small, that in the tapestry of human experience every thread holds the weight of the whole.” Bhasthi added, “What a beautiful win this is for my beautiful language.”
The International Booker Prize celebrates the best works of translated fiction published in the UK and/or Ireland between May 2024 and April 2025. Max Porter, Chair of judges, described the shortlisted works as “a miraculous lens through which to view human experience, both the truly disturbing and the achingly beautiful.”
This win follows previous success for Indian authors, with Geetanjali Shree and Daisy Rockwell winning in 2022 for “Tomb of Sand,” the first Hindi novel to win the award.
First Piper 