Heart Lamp: Selected Stories [Audiobook]

(CD-Audio, Audiobook)

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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.

Reviews

"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)"

"Banu Mushtaq was one of the founding members of the Bandaya Sahitya Sanghatane, which means the Rebel Literary Movement. A favorite phrase of the movement was: 'The dear friend whose heart beats for people's pain.' We see this compassion and love for the people, in particular Muslim women, that Mushtaq writes about in her stories. As a friend, she writes from amidst them, for them, through the struggles, details and complexity of their lives. Deepa Bhasthi's beautiful translation shares these stories with a wider readership."

-- "Kavita Bhanot, editor of Violent Phenomena"

"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"

"Mushtaq's stories about Muslim girls and women in southern India...span more than thirty years of her career as an author."

-- "Washington Post"

"One of Karnataka's leading progressive writers."

-- "New Age Islam, praise for the author"

"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)"

"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"

"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"

Author Bio

Deepa Bhasthi is a writer and literary translator based in Kodagu, southern India. She translates from Kannada and also publishes essays and cultural criticism. Deepa Bhasthi is a writer and literary translator based in Kodagu, southern India. She translates from Kannada and also publishes essays and cultural criticism. Banu Mushtaq is a writer, social activist, and lawyer in the state of Karnataka, southern India. Vikas Adam is a classically trained actor with numerous credits in stage, film, commercials, and television, in addition to his hundreds of recorded audiobooks. In 2025 he was named a Golden Voice, AudioFile magazine's lifetime achievement honor for audiobook narrators. His narrations have garnered numerous other awards and nominations, including more than twenty-five AudioFile Earphones Awards, various Best of the Year lists, and the prestigious Audie Award. He was an inaugural inductee into the Audible Narrator Hall of Fame. Fluent in Hindi, Urdu, and English, Deepti Gupta has an international career spread across India, Singapore, Pakistan, and the United States. As a narrator she brings an open and curious perspective to the author's work. Her natural global/international accent makes her a great choice for an author who is writing to appeal to a global readership/listenership. As an actress she has earned praise from the New York Times for her performance in the feature film Walkaway, and also stars in Record/Play (a sci-fi love story) which was an official selection at Sundance 2013. She earned her MFA in acting from the University of Texas at Austin, an MA in theater studies from the National University of Singapore, and BA in English literature from Delhi University. Besides working as an actress and voice talent, she also works as a consultant with corporate firms and businesses to help expand and deepen their diversity and inclusion strategies.