Indian writer, lawyer and activist Banu Mushtaq has made history by becoming the first author writing in the Kannada language to win the International Booker prize with her short story anthology Heart Lamp, reports BBC.
It is the first short story collection to win the prestigious prize. Judges praised her characters as "astonishing portraits of survival and resilience".
Featuring 12 short stories written by Mushtaq between 1990 and 2023, Heart Lamp poignantly captures the hardships of Muslim women living in southern India.
The stories were selected and translated into English from Kannada, which is spoken in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, by Deepa Bhasthi who will share the £50,000 prize.
In her acceptance speech, Mushtaq thanked readers for letting her words wander into their hearts.
"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," she said.
"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.
Bhasthi, who became the first Indian translator to win an International Booker, said that she hoped that the win would encourage more translations from and into Kannada and other South Asian languages.
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.
Her body of work is well-known among book lovers, but the Booker International win has shone a bigger spotlight on her life and literary oeuvre, which mirrors many of the challenges the women in her stories face, brought on by religious conservatism and a deeply patriarchal society.
It is this self-awareness that has, perhaps, helped Mushtaq craft some of the most nuanced characters and plotlines.
"In a literary culture that rewards spectacle, Heart Lamp insists on the value of attention - to lives lived at the edges, to unnoticed choices, to the strength it takes simply to persist. That is Banu Mushtaq's quiet power," a review in the Indian Express newspaper says about the book.
Who is Banu Mushtaq?
Mushtaq grew up in a small town in the southern state of Karnataka in a Muslim neighbourhood and like most girls around her, studied the Quran in the Urdu language at school.
But her father, a government employee, wanted more for her and at the age of eight, enrolled her in a convent school where the medium of instruction was the state's official language - Kannada.
Mushtaq worked hard to become fluent in Kannada, but this alien tongue would become the language she chose for her literary expression.
Her first 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.
In an interview with Vogue magazine, she said, "I had always wanted to write but had nothing to write (about) because suddenly, after a love marriage, I was told to wear a burqa and dedicate myself to domestic work. I became a mother suffering from postpartum depression at 29".
In the another interview to The Week magazine, she spoke of how she was forced to live a life confined within the four walls of her house.
Then, a shocking act of defiance set her free.
"Once, in a fit of despair, I poured white petrol on myself, intending to set myself on fire. Thankfully, he [the husband] sensed it in time, hugged me, and took away the matchbox. He pleaded with me, placing our baby at my feet saying, 'Don't abandon us'," she told the magazine.
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