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Heart Lamp
- Author
- Banu Mushtaq
- Narrator
- Vikas Adam, Deepti Gupta
- Publisher
- Blackstone Publishing
- Publish Date
- 23 August 2025
- Run Time
- 7 hours 58 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
- Genre
- Family life fiction, Short stories, Fiction: general and literary, Feminism and feminist theory
- Rating
- 5.0 (1 review)
What to expect
Winner of the 2025 International Booker Prize
Winner of a PEN Translates Award
A monumental first collection in English from Banu Mushtaq: lawyer, activist, champion of Muslim women, and winner of India’s highest literary honors.
In the twelve stories of Heart Lamp, Banu Mushtaq exquisitely captures the everyday 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 humor, 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 her characters—the sparky children, the audacious grandmothers, the buffoonish maulvis and thug brothers, the oft-hapless husbands, and the mothers above all, surviving their feelings at great cost—that Mushtaq 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.
Critics Review
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“Deepti Gupta and Vikas Adam beautifully narrate…Gupta effusively voices a variety of distinct and nuanced characters, female and male. Adam’s lively performances deliver emotions ranging from irritation to tenderness and shame. Both narrators are clear and understandable throughout the stories…[which]include humor that makes them even more accessible.”
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“Here are wicked in-laws, bedazzled officials, revered mother figures. Feuds fester until families are left rancid. The gossip is radioactive.”
Times Literary Supplement (London)
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“Affecting portraits of family and community…These deceptively simple tales decry the subjugation of women while celebrating their resilience… eloquently conveying the language’s enduring tradition of oral storytelling.”
Financial Times (London)
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“The stories are united by a keen eye for the interplay between their characters’ social circumstances and inner lives, as religious authority and economic class exert their influence.”
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
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“Exploring the lives of those often on the periphery of society, these vivid stories hold immense emotional and moral weight.”
The International Booker Prize 2025 Judges
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“Deepa Bhasthi’s rich translation captures the original’s nuances of voice, context and experience, bringing this important work into English for new readers in India and internationally.”
PEN Presents Selection Panel
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“One of Karnataka’s leading progressive writers.”
New Age Islam , praise for the author
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“With a tender heart and a sharp eye for nuance, Banu Mushtaq pens stories with deep contextual understanding of patriarchal institutions and with sympathy to the modern realities of contemporary Muslim women.”
Joshua Jones, author of Local Fires: Stories
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“Deepa Bhasthi’s beautiful translation shares these stories with a wider readership.”
Kavita Bhanot, editor of Violent Phenomena
User Reviews
Book 5.0
Narration 5.0
- No written reviews yet.
Details
- Author
- Banu Mushtaq
- Narrator
- Vikas Adam, Deepti Gupta
- Duration
- 7 hours 58 minutes
- Release Date
- 23 August 2025
- ISBN
- 9798228579484
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Blackstone Publishing
- Genre
- Family life fiction, Short stories, Fiction: general and literary, Feminism and feminist theory
- Rating
- 5.0(1 review)
- Narration
- 5.0(1 review)
Synopsis
Winner of the 2025 International Booker PrizeWinner of a PEN Translates AwardA monumental first collection in English from Banu Mushtaq: lawyer, activist, champion of Muslim women, and winner of India’s highest literary honors.In the twelve stories of Heart Lamp, Banu Mushtaq exquisitely captures the everyday 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 humor, 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 her characters—the sparky children, the audacious grandmothers, the buffoonish maulvis and thug brothers, the oft-hapless husbands, and the mothers above all, surviving their feelings at great cost—that Mushtaq 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.
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