3 days ago
'I reject the hegemony of the novel': Banu Mushtaq
Banu Mushtaqm, the 2025 International Booker Prize-winning author of Heart Lamp - Selected Stories, delved into short story writing and how she rejects the dominance of the novel while delivering a lecture at the Mount Carmel College Foundation Day celebrations on Saturday.
'No story is short,' said Ms. Mushtaq, 'I reject the hegemony of the novel. Short stories require a different kind of mastery; in a small canvas, you have to paint the full truth,' she said.
On translation of her stories in Kannada to English, she said, 'I wanted my voice to reach beyond Karnataka. I wanted Western readers to feel our lives. And I believed, even if no one else did.'
Encouraging youngsters to write, she said, 'You don't need to wait for anyone to approve your voice. You don't need a perfect background; you need to live, observe, experience, and write. You will be criticised, misunderstood, doubted. But one day, someone will read your story and say that it's theirs too'.
Ms. Mushtaq reflected on how her early education was shaped by religious expectations, societal prejudice, and limited access to language. 'I studied in an Urdu school for two years without learning a single alphabet,' she recalled. 'My father cried when he saw how little I had learnt. But he never gave up on me,' she said.
Responding to a question, she said she writes about sex, politics, and religion because society tells women not to. 'That's precisely why I must,' she said, adding 'My writing is not just imagination. It is documentation'.
