Indian author Banu Mushtaq and translator Deepa Bhasthi won the International Booker Prize for fiction for Heart Lamp, a collection of 12 short stories written over a period of more than 30 years and which chronicle the everyday lives and struggles of women in southern India.
The award was announced by bestselling Booker Prize-longlisted author Max Porter in his role as chair of the five-member voting panel, at a ceremony at London’s Tate Modern.
The annual award celebrates the best works of fiction from around the world that have been translated into English and published in the U.K. or Ireland. The £50,000 (approx. $93,188 Cdn) grand prize is divided equally between writer and translator. There were no Canadians nominated this year.
The prize was set up to boost the profile of fiction in other languages — which accounts for only a small share of books published in Britain — and to salute the underappreciated work of literary translators.
It is the first time the International Booker Prize has been given to a collection of short stories. Bhasthi is the first Indian translator — and ninth female translator — to win the prize since it took on its current form in 2016. Mushtaq is the sixth female author to be awarded the prize since then.
Written in Kannada, which is spoken by around 65 million people, primarily in southern India, Porter praised the “radical” nature of the translation, adding that “it’s been a joy” to listen to the evolving appreciation of the stories by members of the jury.
“These beautiful, busy, life-affirming stories rise from Kannada, interspersed with the extraordinary socio-political richness of other languages and dialects,” said Porter. “It speaks of women’s lives, reproductive rights, faith, caste, power and oppression.”
The book, which beat five other finalists, comprises stories written from 1990 to 2023. They were selected and curated by Bhasthi, who was keen to preserve the multilingual nature of southern India in her translation.
Mushtaq, who is a lawyer and activist as well as writer, told a short list reading event on Sunday that the stories “are about women – how religion, society and politics demand unquestioning obedience from them, and in doing so, inflict inhumane cruelty upon them, turning them into mere subordinates.”
The prize money is to be divided equally between author and translator. Each is presented with a trophy too.
Last year’s winner was German author Jenny Erpenbeck for Kairos, the story of a tangled love affair during the final years of East Germany’s existence, translated by Michael Hofmann.
With files from CBC Books
