Banu Mushtaq’s Heart Lamp, a collection of Kannada short stories translated into English by Deepa Bhasthi, has won the 2025 International Booker Prize 2022.

It is the first ever Kannada book, and the second from India as well as South Asia, to win the award, which is given to translated works of fiction published in the UK and Ireland. It is also the first collection of short stories to win. Bhasthi is the first Indian translator to win the award. In 2022, Geetanjali Shree’s Ret Samadhi, translated into English by Daisy Rockwell as Tomb of Sand, won the International Booker Prize.

The prize money of £50,000 will be shared equally between the author and the translator. The announcement was made on Tuesday night in London.

Max Porter, International Booker Prize 2025 Chair of judges, said: “'Heart Lamp is 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. These beautiful, busy, life-affirming stories rise from Kannada, interspersed with the extraordinary socio-political richness of other languages and dialects. It speaks of women’s lives, reproductive rights, faith, caste, power and oppression. This was the book the judges really loved, right from our first reading. It’s been a joy to listen to the evolving appreciation of these stories from the different perspectives of the jury. We are thrilled to share this timely and exciting winner of the International Booker Prize 2025 with readers around the world.”

Fiammetta Rocco, Administrator of the International Booker Prize, added: “Heart Lamp, stories written by a great advocate of women’s rights over three decades and translated with sympathy and ingenuity, should be read by men and women all over the world. The book speaks to our times, and to the ways in which many are silenced.”

Heart Lamp has been published by And Other Stories in the UK, Scribe in Australia, and Penguin Random House in India.

The shortlist, spanning five languages – French, Dutch, Italian, Japanese, and Kannada – comprised the following books:

  • A Leopard-Skin Hat, Anne Serre, translated from the French by Mark Hutchinson, New Directions Publishing.

  • Heart Lamp: Selected Stories, Banu Mushtaq, translated from Kannada by Deeba Bhasthi, And Other Stories.

  • On the Calculation of Volume, Solvej Balle, translated from the Dutch by Barbara J Haveland, Faber and Faber.

  • Perfection, Vincenzo Latronico, translated from the Italian by Sophie Hughes, Fitzcarraldo Editions.

  • Small Boat, Vincent Delecroix, translated from French by Helen Stevenson, Peepal Tress Press.

  • Under the Eye of the Big Bird, Hiromi Kawakami, translated from Japanese by Asa Yoneda, Granta Books.