Book Review: ‘Heart Lamp’ by Banu Mushtaq

Book Title: Heart Lamp: Selected Stories
Author: Banu Mushtaq
Publisher: Penguin
Number of Pages: 224
ISBN: 978-0143464471
Date Published: Apr. 15, 2025
Price: INR 243

Book Review

Banu Mushtaq’s “Heart Lamp“, translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi, is a deeply moving collection of twelve short stories that peels back the layers of everyday life for Muslim women in southern India. Rather than loud proclamations or overt resistance, Mushtaq’s stories speak in quiet, persistent tones—illuminating lives shaped by faith, patriarchy, caste, and social neglect. Winner of the 2025 International Booker Prize, this collection offers what can best be described as literature of witness: it doesn’t plead or protest; it simply shows, and in doing so, it stirs the conscience.

The brilliance of “Heart Lamp” lies in the precision of its storytelling. Mushtaq doesn’t craft heroes or martyrs; her women are neither symbols nor victims—they are mothers, grandmothers, little girls, and exhausted wives. With irony as sharp as it is tender, stories like Be a Woman Once, Oh Lord and A Decision of the Heart turn religious metaphors on their heads. Men, often regarded as gods within the domestic sphere, are exposed in all their flawed, bumbling, sometimes cruel humanity. The title story is especially gut-wrenching—a woman pushed to the edge, attempting self-immolation after her family denies her dignity and escape. It’s a fire that burns in the gut long after the page is turned.

What truly amplifies these narratives is Mushtaq’s signature style—witty, warm, colloquial, and full of sardonic humour. Her world is animated by unapologetically vibrant characters: children who ask too many questions, maulvis with buffoonish airs, and women who carry centuries of silence in their eyes. Deepa Bhasthi’s translation carries the rhythm and soul of the original Kannada, ensuring that the stories resonate beyond borders and reach a global audience. Even in moments of unbearable grief, there are slivers of hope, joy, and resistance that shimmer like light through a cracked window.

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While some readers might find the collection emotionally heavy, or feel overwhelmed by its unflinching portrayal of domestic cruelty and abandonment, “Heart Lamp” is anything but despairing. It’s a luminous reminder that truth, even when painful, must be told. With this book, Banu Mushtaq not only reshapes the literary landscape for women’s voices in Indian fiction but also kindles a quiet revolution—one burning word at a time.

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