A Shift for Indian Literature in Translation: Banu Mushtaq and Deepa Bhasthi Win International Booker
At a ceremony held at London’s Tate Modern on May 20, Heart Lamp , a collection of short stories by Banu Mushtaq and translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi, was awarded the 2025 International Booker Prize. It is the first short story collection to win the award and the first Kannada work to be recognised in the prize’s history. The £50,000 prize is shared equally between author and translator, in keeping with the award’s focus on the importance of translation in bringing international fiction to English-language readers. For Indian literature, it is a significant development. Just three years after Geetanjali Shree and Daisy Rockwell won the same prize for Tomb of Sand , this year’s recognition of Heart Lamp reinforces the growing presence of Indian-language writing in global literary spaces. Which country has won the most International Bookers? It’s India! Here’s the year-by-year list from 2016 to 2025: South Korea. Israel. Poland. Oman. Netherlands. France. India. Bulgaria. German...