India's Banu Mustaq becomes first Kannada writer to win International Booker
London, May 21 (UNI) In a momentous literary breakthrough, Indian writer, lawyer and activist Banu Mustaq has become the first author writing in Kannada to win the prestigious International Booker Prize for her powerful short story anthology 'Heart Lamp'.
The anthology, spanning 12 stories written between 1990 and 2023, was translated into English by Deepa Bhasthi, who also became the first Indian translator to win the coveted literary award.
"This book was born from the belief that no story is ever small; that in the tapestry of human experience, every thread holds the weight of the whole," Mustaq declared in her acceptance speech.
"In a world that often tries to divide us, literature remains one of the last sacred spaces where we can live inside each other's minds, if only for a few pages," she added.
Hailing from a modest township in Karnataka, Mustaq's journey to authorship was anything but conventional. Her short story appeared in a local magazine a year after she had married a man of her choosing at the age of 26, but her early marital years were also marked by conflict and strife - something she openly spoke of, in several interviews.
Over the years Mushtaq's writings have won numerous prestigious local and national awards including the Karnataka Sahitya Academy Award and the Daana Chintamani Attimabbe Award.
Mushtaq's win comes off the back of Geetanjali Shree's Tomb of Sand - translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell - winning the prize in 2022, reports BBC.
In 2024, the translated English compilation of Mushtaq's five short story collections published between 1990 and 2012 - Haseena and Other Stories - won the PEN Translation Prize.
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