Indian author, translator win International Booker Prize – DW – 05/21/2025
Banu Mushtaq is the first author of Kannada-language literature to receive the award for translated fiction. Her short story collection "Heart Lamp" was written over 30-years.
Banu Mushtaq, the Indian writer and activist, was awarded the International Booker Prize on Tuesday for her short story collection "Heart Lamp," the first Kannada-language author to win the prize for translated fiction.
The 77-year-old Mushtaq will share the £50,000 ($67,000, €59,300) prize with her translator Deepa Bhasthi, who also helped with picking the stories featured in the award-winning collection.
This marks the first time that a collection of short stories receives the award. It also makes Bhasthi the first Indian translator to win the prize in its current form, adopted in 2016.
The annual International Booker Prize is run alongside the Booker Prize for English-language fiction, but the latter is handed out in the fall.
Max Porter hails 'Heart Lamp'
The award ceremony was held at London's Tate Modern Museum, and announced by bestselling Booker Prize-longlisted author Max Porter, who chairs the five-member voting panel.
Porter hailed "Heart Lamp" as "something genuinely new for English readers."
"These beautiful, busy, life-affirming stories rise from Kannada, interspersed with the extraordinary socio-political richness of other languages and dialects," said Porter.
"It speaks of women's lives, reproductive rights, faith, caste, power and oppression."
Mushtaq calls her win 'utterly collective'
During her acceptance speech, Mushtaq described the award as a "great honor," saying she was receiving it "not as an individual but as a voice raised in chorus with so many others."
"This moment feels like a thousand fireflies lighting a single sky -- brief, brilliant and utterly collective," she said.
Kannada is spoken by some 65 million people, primarily in southern India.
Mushtaq wrote the short stories featured in the collection between 1990 and 2023. Bhasthi's curation and translation was keen to preserve the multilingual nature of southern India.
The collection was critically praised for its dry and gentle humor, witty style and commentary on issues such as patriarch, casteism and religious conservatism.
Edited by: Louis Oelofse
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Int'l Business Times
24-05-2025
- Int'l Business Times
Highlights From Cannes As Film Festival Wraps Up
As the Cannes film festival hands out its prizes, AFP looks back at some of the highlights of a politically charged fortnight of screenings and celebrity sightings. The festival began on May 13 with a flap about a new dress code which states that extravagantly large dresses are prohibited on the red carpet, as well as "total nudity". Oscar-winner Halle Berry was the first victim, with the "Monster's Ball" star forced into a wardrobe change for the opening ceremony because her dress was too long. Although many people seemed to flout the guidelines, Indian model and influencer Snigdha Baruah was forced to remove a flowing train from her dress having been barred by security at the VIP entrance. Not content to let the dresses steal all the limelight, "Succession" star and jury member Jeremy Strong has brought some eye-catching menswear in bold colours to the Riviera. After years of scandals in the film industry and pressure to take a stand, the festival announced a new #MeToo policy by barring an actor in a prominent French film from the red carpet because of rape allegations. Theo Navarro-Mussy, who appears in "Dossier 137", denies the allegations and an initial police investigation was closed last month. This year's gathering on the Riviera marked a step in the rehabilitation of scandal-plagued star Kevin Spacey, however, who accepted a lifetime achievement award at a charity gala. Australian legend Nicole Kidman meanwhile issued a plea for more women directors, saying their number was still "incredibly low". Only three women have ever won a Palme d'Or. A trio of actors made their highly anticipated directorial debuts, with differing fortunes. "Babygirl" actor Harris Dickinson, 28, and "Twilight" star Kristen Stewart, 35, left Cannes with praise ringing in their ears for their films, "Urchin" and "The Chronology of Water". Reviews for Scarlett Johansson's first turn behind the camera, "Eleanor the Great", would have made for more difficult reading, however. There was no escaping the war in Gaza this year. Hundreds of film figures signed an open letter on the eve of the festival calling on the movie industry to call out "genocide". Iranian film maker Sepideh Farsi's heart-wrenching documentary about slain Palestinian photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, killed in an Israeli air strike on her home in Gaza last month, left its audience in stunned silence when it premiered on May 15. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange walked the red carpet wearing a T-shirt bearing the names of killed Gaza children as he promoted a documentary about his own life. Amid the champagne and air kisses, US President Donald Trump was also focusing minds, particularly in the Cannes film market where the deals are cut for new projects. Trump's pledge to implement 100-percent tariffs on movies "produced in foreign lands" provoked a mixture of horror, disbelief and mockery from industry insiders. "I can't find myself taking it very seriously. It's just too surreal," American director Wes Anderson told AFP. "Taxi Driver" star Robert De Niro slammed "America's philistine president" in his opening ceremony speech. Tom Cruise swept into Cannes on a steamroller of hype around "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning" which premiered to mixed reviews in the first week. Director Christopher McQuarrie revealed that Cruise -- who does his own stunts -- took his risk-taking a little far during a shoot in South Africa and could have died. "He was laying on the wing of the plane. His arms were hanging over the front of the wing. We could not tell if he was conscious or not," said the US filmmaker. Saturday's closing ceremony was the final act of a drama-filled day that saw Cannes suffer a more than five-hour power cut. Local authorities blamed suspected sabotage at a nearby electricity substation and a pylon. The reaction of French emergency services was also one of the biggest talking points among attendees this year after a man was knocked down by a falling palm tree in a freak accident during the first week. He was whisked to hospital and discharged several days later to return home. US actor Robert De Niro (R) received the Honorary Palme d'Or from US actor Leonardo DiCaprio AFP McQuarrie said the crew feared Cruise (left) had passed out during one stunt on a biplane AFP Kevin Spacey is 'glad to be back working' AFP Halle Berry was among the stars on the red carpet AFP Scarlett Johansson poses with actress June Squibb who plays the lead role in 'Eleanor the Great' AFP At the screening of Wes Anderson's "The Phoenician Scheme" on May 18, 2025. AFP
DW
22-05-2025
- DW
Two Indian women artists blazing their own trails – DW – 05/22/2025
Mayuri Chari and Janhavi Khemka's artwork is very different. But they both have powerful artistic visions informed by personal experiences of gender, disability and family — and they're both making names for themselves. 'Art is my accessibility': Janhavi Khemka Janhavi Khemka's mother has always been the source of her inspiration as an artist. Her earliest memories of making art involve her mother: "My mother would help me with my school assignments, explaining them through hand gestures, facial expressions, and body language." Khemka (above right), who was born in Varanasi, India in 1993, is hearing-impaired. Her mother taught her to read lips in Hindi at a young age and encouraged her artistic exploration. But she died when Khemka was 15. "The impact she left on me helped me navigate an able-bodied world, further inspiring my art through light, touch, experimental sound, and tactile mediums," Khemka said in a written interview with DW. Janhavi Khemka's woodcut work 'Self-portrait' (2024) is inspired by Van Gogh Image: Janhavi Khemka It is in this able-bodied world that Khemka is making a name for herself as an interdisciplinary artist working across a diverse array of mediums, from woodcut to painting to performance and animation. She earned an MFA (Master of Fine Arts) from the prestigious School of the Art Institute of Chicago and, prior to that, one from Visva-Bharati University at Santiniketan, a historic education center based in West Bengal that is deeply rooted in Indian culture and traditions. "Santiniketan opened a new world for me, as it was my first time being away from home. It helped me grow, understand how my disability shapes my identity. It was transformative, helping me expand my perspectives, connect with people and artists, and deepen my engagement with art." Friends and mentors have supported Khemka's career as an artist, but she still faces a lack of accessibility and is "constantly self-aware" and having to explain her experience to others, which can be "exhausting." Khemka's art has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Much of it relates to her being a hearing-impaired person who experiences sound through vibration. Some of her works, like "Impress/ion" and "Your name, please?" are interactive, involving a direct exchange with individual audience members. In 2021, she created "Letter to My Mother" — a vibrating platform adorned in a projected animated light pattern consisting of lips made from woodcut prints. It recalls how her mother taught her to lip read on a mat. For her, "It's a personal experience that connects me with my mom in a way that words alone cannot express." For viewers, it allows them to experience sound in a tactile fashion and ushers them into an intimate moment in the artist's life. "My greatest success is feeling comfortable in the world, where I can exist freely and confidently," Khemka says. 'A woman is not born, she is created': Mayuri Chari A free and confident existence: This is always what conceptual artist Mayuri Chari hopes for herself as a woman — and for women everywhere. She prefers the term priorities to success. And her priorities are speaking through her work, which focuses on the female body, and expressing what she wants to tell people, not what people want her to tell. In fact, they don't always like what her art tells. Conceptual artist Mayuri Chari's work draws on the motto, 'A woman is not born, she is created' Image: Tausif Matwal Whether through print, textile, film or even cow dung, Chari examines and challenges how women are seen, positioned and treated across various strata of Indian society. "They are not stories or tales," she says of her artwork's messages about women. "They are reality." She started experimenting with the female body as a subject during her MFA at the University of Hyderabad. For one semester show, she made large prints of her own body. She saw the work artistically, for its texture and colors. "But they," she said of her classmates and other viewers, "their gaze was totally different. They saw it as a vulgar thing and suggested that I shouldn't do this openly." Their response only got her thinking more. "I started to question why: Why are people seeing the body as something vulgar, sexy? Why not as a creative thing?" she told DW in a phone interview from her home in rural Maharashtra. The body prints Chari made during her master's, including the one above, significantly influenced her artistic direction Image: Mayuri Chair In Chari's work, the female body is neither a goddess nor an object of consumption but rather a statement of self-awareness. Yet her art has been controversial in India for simply featuring nude female bodies — realistic, imperfect, bold. Indian galleries have rejected her works and exhibition venue owners have asked her to remove pieces. Despite such institutional rejection, her work resonates strongly with Indian women, who see themselves and their experiences reflected in her art. Chari says that women often come up to her at shows and whisper in her ear, "I feel the same thing. This happens to me, also." Her work has been garnering international attention in recent years. Her installation "I WAS NOT CREATED FOR PLEASURE," was featured at the 12th Berlin Biennale , in 2022, and she was an artist in residence at the 2024 India Art Fair. 'My body, my freedom II' (2021), by Mayuri Chari Image: Mayuri Chari Like Janhavi Khemka, Chari's family also influenced her path as an artist — though not always positively. Born in the coastal state of Goa in 1991, Chari spent a lot of time as a child watching and helping her father, a carpenter, create furniture and carvings. She started making art in school, where her teachers encouraged her. But after her father died, Chari was forbidden by her family, in particular her elder uncle, from pursuing higher-level studies. She defied them and did it anyway, earning a master's in fine arts with the help of friends and scholarships. Her now husband and fellow artist, Prabhakar Kamble, provided her with important support and resources in her early days out of school. While Chari's work centers on society's positioning of women, she feels it is caste, more than gender, that has affected her reception. "Everything depends on the caste, where you come from. I came from a low caste, and big galleries always appreciate the high caste people. They notice them, and they always want people who speak well in English, and who have money," she explains. During COVID, Chari (center) launched a project called 'Me, home and the kitchen,' that sought to empower local women affected by the lockdown Image: Manasee Chari Advice for aspiring young artists Chari's current projects include a short documentary about the lives of rural female sugar laborers and textile projects dealing with trousseau-making — a bridal needlework practice that Portuguese colonizers brought to her home state of Goa and that continues to be passed on today from mother to daughter; she learned it from her own mother. Janhavi Khemka's mother will also continue to be at the forefront of her work. In the future, she hopes to make a movie using woodcut print animation exploring their relationship. Drawing on her own experience, she tells younger artists to "face failure with courage, hold on to patience and hope, and be ready to meet challenges head-on." Chari, for her part, advises younger artists to make sure they remain free and independent thinkers. "They shouldn't follow others," she says. "Or follow the thoughts, ideas, what other artists are doing, but don't copy them." Edited by: Brenda Haas
DW
21-05-2025
- DW
Who is International Booker Prize winner Banu Mushtaq? – DW – 05/21/2025
The 77-year-old Indian activist is the first Kannada-language author to win the award, which also recognizes the work of translators: Deepa Bhasthi also played a central role in the book's success. "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," author Banu Mushtaq said in her acceptance speech for the International Booker Prize, which she won for "Heart Lamp" on May 20. "In a world that often tries to divide us, literature remains one of the last sacred spaces where we can live inside each other's minds, if only for a few pages," the Indian writer added. The English-language translation of her book "Heart Lamp" (original title: "Hridaya Deepa") becomes the first short-story collection to win the prestigious prize for translated fiction. Mushtaq is also the first Kannada-language author to win the award. The Booker jury describes Mushtaq's writing as "at once witty, vivid, moving and excoriating, building disconcerting emotional heights out of a rich spoken style. It's in her characters — the sparky children, the audacious grandmothers, the buffoonish maulvis [a learned teacher or doctor of Islamic law, Editor's note] and thug brothers, the oft-hapless husbands, and the mothers above all, surviving their feelings at great cost — that she emerges as an astonishing writer and observer of human nature." Drawing from her own experience of despair But before landing in the international spotlight, there were also moments in the now 77-year-old writer's life that were so dark that she no longer wanted to live. She recalled in a recent interview with Indian magazine The Week that she once poured white petrol on herself and was ready to set herself on fire. Her husband managed to persuade her out of doing it by placing their baby at her feet, saying, "Don't abandon us." "I realized then what a terrible thing I was about to do. Looking back, it might have been post-partum depression. But it felt deeper, heavier ― like something inside me was breaking." As a new mother recovering from post-partum depression, she turned to writing to explore what she was going through. "Everything in my stories is somewhat autobiographical. That experience made me more empathetic," she concluded. 'Heart Lamp' is a collection of 12 short stories written by Mushtaq between 1990 and 2023 Image: And Other Stories Verlag A rare female voice in Karnataka's 'Rebel Literature' Mushtaq was born in 1948 into a Muslim family in Karnataka, a state in the southwestern region of India. Defying her community's conventions, she attended university and married for love at age 26. During the 1980s, Mushtaq got involved in Karnataka's growing social movements that aimed to abolish caste and class hierarchies. All while learning about social structures and the plight of marginalized communities, she supported her family by working as a reporter for a local tabloid, and a decade later, she became a lawyer. As a Muslim woman lawyer with deep roots in her community, she developed a unique voice in her short stories, building in her own spirit of resistance and resilience in her female characters. She emerged as one of the rare female voices to significantly contribute to Bandaya Sahitya (Rebel Literature), a literary movement that emerged in Karnataka as a protest against social injustices. Women at a polling station in Karnataka, the southern Indian state where Banu Mushtaq found her voice as a writer and activist Image: MANJUNATH KIRAN/AFP Target of a fatwa and threats Her activism and writing has however made her the target of hostility and threats. In an interview with The Hindu, she recalls the severe backlash she faced for advocating for Muslim women's right to enter mosques in 2000. A fatwa — a legal decree under Islamic law — was issued against her, and a man once attempted to attack her with a knife. Despite the dangers, Mushtaq nevertheless pursues her work as an activist and a writer. "I have consistently challenged chauvinistic religious interpretations," she told The Week magazine. "These issues are central to my writing even now. Society has changed a lot, but the core issues remain the same. Even though the context evolves, the basic struggles of women and marginalized communities continue." "Heart Lamp" is a collection of 12 short stories written by Mushtaq between 1990 and 2023. Her oeuvre includes six short story collections, a novel, a poetry compilation and numerous essays. Found in translation with Deepa Bhasthi The International Booker Prize recognizes the essential work of translators, with the prize money of £50,000 (€60,000, $67,000) divided equally between the authors and translators. Banu Mushtaq and her translator, right, Deepa Bhasthi Image: Alberto Pezzali/AP Photo/picture alliance In this case, translator Deepa Bhasthi also served as an editor of the book, having selected the stories for the collection: "I was lucky to have a free hand in choosing what stories I wanted to work with, and Banu did not interfere with the organized chaotic way I went about it," she told the Booker Prizes organizers. The jury particularly praised Deepa Bhasthi's skilful translation as "something genuinely new for English readers. A radical translation which ruffles language, to create new textures in a plurality of Englishes. It challenges and expands our understanding of translation." Mushtaq's first language is actually Urdu. She started learning Kannada, Karnataka's official state language, at the age of eight when she was enrolled in a convent school by her father. It became the language she chose for her literary work. But her writing reflects the linguistic diversity of her region, often blending Kannada with Dakhni Urdu (a mix of Urdu, Kannada, Marathi and Telugu). She sees using colloquial language as not just a medium of communication, but a tool for cultural expression and resistance. The English translation conveys the original approach, combining different languages, as Bhasthi retains several Kannada, Urdu and Arabic words. It is estimated that Kannada is spoken by 65 million people. Last year, it became the 53rd language of Vatican Radio. But like many other Indian languages, Kannada has often been sidelined in favor of English or Hindi in India's publishing industry. Mushtaq's success disrupts that trend, contributing to increased funding and translation efforts for other regional works, especially those by women and marginalized writers. Edited by: Brenda Haas
