22 May 2025
Geetanjali Shree was the first Indian to win the award in 2022 for her book ‘Tomb of Sand’, translated from Hindi to English by Daisy Rockwell.
Banu Mushtaq, a lawyer and women’s rights activist, and her translator, Deepa Bhasti, won the International Booker Prize 2025 for her novel Heart Lamp (Edeya Hanate in Kannada). It is a collection of 12 short stories on the Dalits and women, selected from her works published between 1990 and 2023.
Mushtaq, born in 1948 in Hassan, Karnataka, emerged as a coveted literary voice during the Bandaya Sahitya (Rebel Literature) movement in the 1970s. Around 20 years ago, she faced a knife attack for advocating women’s rights to pray in mosques.
The International Booker Prize includes a £50,000 cash reward, split equally between the writer and the translator. Each shortlisted author and translator receives £2,500.
This is the first time a collection of short stories has won the British literary honour, and the second time a Kannada to English novel has been shortlisted.
The first was U.R. Ananthamurthy’s body of work.
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