It is indeed a high moment for Kannada and Karnataka: Kannada literature finds itself on the global literary map, thanks to the labour of two women. Banu Mushtaq, a senior Kannada writer, has been awarded the 2025 International Booker Prize for Heart Lamp (Hridaya Deepa), her anthology of 12 short stories, translated into English by Deepa Bhasthi. Women’s writing in Kannada has not received the recognition it deserves. Even most of the notable awards at the national level, the Jnanpith for instance, have been conferred on men. In this context, the Booker is indeed a historic moment for women’s writing in Kannada which can boast of great talent from Triveni and MK Indira of yesteryears to Pratibha Nandakumar, Vaidehi, and Du Saraswathi, actively writing today. And there is more, where it comes from. Much more!

Banu Mushtaq hails from Hassan, the south-western town in the plains of Karnataka, while Deepa lives in Madikeri, a town in the Western Ghat ranges. The ordinary lives of common people in her small town constitute Banu’s fictional universe. The award, thus, signals the triumph of the small town.

A practising advocate, and social activist, Banu is the author of six short story collections, a novel, an essay collection and a poetry collection. Several important honours, including the Karnataka Sahitya Academy award and the Daana Chintamani Attimabbe award have come seeking her. Her short story Black Cobras, which depicts the plight of Hasina, an abandoned wife, was made into an award-winning film by Girish Kasaravalli, the eminent film director, in 2004. Hasina and Other Stories, another collection of her short stories, also translated by Deepa Bhasthi, had won the English PEN translation award in 2024.

Banu began her career during the Bandaya or the protest movement of the heady 1970s and ’80s. The movement culminated in the awakening of a new social consciousness, which led to the effervescence of new writing in Kannada. The unheard voices of marginalised groups were heard for........

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