HEART LAMP - SELECTED STORIES
Winner of the 2025 International Booker Prize
In the twelve stories of Heart Lamp, Banu Mushtaq exquisitely captures the everyday lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India. Published originally in the Kannada language between 1990 and 2023, praised for their dry and gentle humour, these portraits of family and community tensions testify to Mushtaq's years as a journalist and lawyer, in which she tirelessly championed women's rights and protested all forms of caste and religious oppression. Written in a style at once witty, vivid, colloquial, moving and excoriating, it's in her characters - the sparky children, the audacious grandmothers, the buffoonish maulvis and thug brothers, the oft-hapless husbands, and the mothers above all, surviving their feelings at great cost - that Mushtaq emerges as an astonishing writer and observer of human nature, building disconcerting emotional heights out of a rich spoken style. Her opus has garnered both censure from conservative quarters as well India's most prestigious literary awards; this is a collection sure to be read for years to come.
Edad recomendada: Adultos.
MUSHTAQ BANU
Banu Mushtaq es una escritora, activista y abogada india nacida en Hassan, Karnataka, el 3 de abril de 1948. Escribe en canarés y comenzó su carrera literaria a los 29 años, influida por la depresión posparto. Ha publicado cuentos, ensayos y poesía centrados en los derechos de las mujeres y la justicia social. Fue reportera y ha enfrentado amenazas por su activismo. En 2025 ganó el Premio Booker Internacional por Heart Lamp.
