In the twelve stories of Heart Lamp. Banu Mushtaq exquisitely captures the lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India. Published originally in the Kannada language between 1990 and 2023, praised for their dry and gentle humour, these portraits of family and community tensions testify to Mushtaq’s years as a journalist and lawyer, in which she tirelessly championed women’s rights and protested all forms of caste and religious oppression. Written in a style at once witty, vivid, colloquial, moving and excoriating, it’s in het characters - the sparky children, the audacious grandmothers, the buffoonish maul is and thug brothers, the oft-hapless husbands, and the mothers above all, surviving their feelings at great cost - that Mushtag emerges as an astonishing writer and observer of human nature, building disconcerting emotional heights out of a rich spoken style. Her opus has garnered both censure from conservative quarters as well India’s most prestigious literary awards: this is a collection sure to be read for years to come.
International Booker 2025 longlist International Booker 2025 shortlist FictionSelected Highlights
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