![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/The-Conversation-e1535448713758.jpg?resize=117%2C12&ssl=1\")
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Banu Mushtaq\u2019s quietly powerful collection of short stories, translated by Deepa Bhasthi, shines a light on the lives of Muslim women in rural India. It is the first time that the International Booker prize has been won by a book translated from Kannada, a language of south India spoken by between 50 and 80 million people.<\/p>\n
Mushtaq is a writer who has previously worked as a journalist and lawyer, fighting for women\u2019s rights and speaking out against caste and religious oppression. This comes through in the vignettes collected in Heart Lamp<\/em>. At the centre of this work is great compassion for the women Mushtaq brings to life in her writing.<\/p>\n Inspired by encounters with women who came to her for help, each of Mushtaq\u2019s stories introduces us to a different woman from a different family. What the women of Heart Lamp<\/em> share is that their lives are all dictated by men.<\/p>\n We meet a young girl forced into wedlock, and a woman whose son arranges a new marriage for her. Elsewhere, an older woman is obliged to accept the indignity of her husband taking a second wife.<\/p>\n Heart Lamp<\/em> opens up an intimate world of domestic rituals and family tensions, rife with judgement, suspicion, righteousness and sacrifice. In the quiet of daily life, Mushtaq reveals the enormity of human emotion and experience. She also reveals the resilience of the women who resist the violence \u2013 physical, emotional, social and psychological \u2013 inflicted on them.<\/p>\n Women are insulted for not expressing desire when they are forced into the conjugal bed, reproached for bearing girls, and warned repeatedly that any non-compliance is a stain on family honour. They are beaten and casually replaced with second wives.<\/p>\n In one horrific instance from the title story, a woman is told in no uncertain terms that \u201cif you had the sense to uphold our family honour, you would have set yourself on fire and died\u201d \u2013 a chilling sanction that hangs over the story until its tense d\u00e9nouement.<\/p>\n Deepa Bhasthi\u2019s bold and memorable translation invites us not to impose our own language and linguistic system on the original work.<\/p>\n There are several words that are offered as a transliteration of their original Kannada form, without heavy-handed glosses or an attempt to transpose them into something more immediately recognisable to Anglophone readers. In her translator\u2019s note, Bhasthi describes this as \u201cagainst italics\u201d, where using italics would signal to the reader that a word has been brought across from the Kannada.<\/p>\n Bhasthi favours a way of translating that aims to respect the culture and language of the original text. This trusts readers to come to that language and culture rather than rendering the text in a blandly comfortable English that might make the setting more familiar but would strip it of its specificity.<\/p>\n Instead, Bhasthi\u2019s work welcomes Kannada\u2019s evocative phrases, introducing into English lines such as \u201cNo matter how many times I tell you, you don\u2019t let it fall inside your ears.\u201d \u201cIs the fruit a burden on the creeper?\u201d And \u201cthe snake of arrogance had laid many, many eggs.\u201d<\/p>\n Bhasthi selected the 12 stories of Heart Lamp<\/em> from a range of pieces written by Mushtaq over many years, and with her translation of the title story, was a winner of the first issue of PEN Presents, a digital initiative led by English PEN (which stands for poets, playwrights, editors, essayists and novelists).<\/p>\n This organisation funds and promotes samples of original and diverse literature not yet available in English translation, fostering bibliodiversity by brokering connections between under-represented cultural contexts and UK publishers and readers.<\/p>\n Following its promotion through PEN Presents, Heart Lamp<\/em> was acquired by And Other Stories, a Sheffield-based independent publisher that has been at the vanguard of publishing innovative literature in translation over the past 15 years. The award represents multiple important firsts.<\/p>\n As well as being the first book translated from Kannada to win the International Booker prize, it is the first time the prize has been won by an Indian translator. It is the first time a short story collection has won the award.<\/p>\n It is also the first time And Other Stories has won the award and the first International Booker prize to be awarded to a PEN Presents winner. That it has received this highest of accolades in the translated literature sector of the publishing industry shows the importance of publishing that takes risks, of representing a broader range of languages and cultures in translation and of initiatives to support translators.<\/p>\n This striking collection is perhaps best summed up in the final story, \u201cBe a Woman Once, O Lord!\u201d, in which the narrator teasingly implores her creator:<\/p>\n \u201cIf you were to build the world again, to create males and females again, do not be like an inexperienced potter. Come to earth as a woman, Prabhu!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n With unfailing compassion and humour, Mushtaq and Bhasthi lead us through a society that prioritises masculinity, male dominance, and father-son lineage. In so doing, they invite us \u2013 and whichever male deity might be listening \u2013 to walk in the shoes of women overlooked by an unquestioned patriarchal and religious hierarchy, and to re-evaluate what we think we know about social dynamics.<\/p>\n Helen Vassallo<\/span> Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 23 May 2025<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Books<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":43366,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[27],"tags":[53121,53122,15133,53119,53123,38233,53120,31012],"class_list":["post-43365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society","tag-heart-lamp","tag-banu-mushtaq","tag-books","tag-books-in-translation","tag-deepa-bhasthi","tag-give-me-perspective","tag-international-booker","tag-reading"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Heart-Lamp.jpg?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8QzSF-bhr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43365"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43368,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43365\/revisions\/43368"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Heart-Lamp.jpg?resize=640%2C360&ssl=1\")
Writer Banu Mushtaq (right) and Deepa Bhasthi (left) with their awards for the book Heart Lamp.\u00a0International Booker<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Associate Professor of French and Translation, <\/span>
\nUniversity of Exeter<\/span><\/p>\n
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