Booker prize for India’s Banu Mushtaq
Kochi: Indian Activist Banu Mushtaq, 77, from Karnataka won the International Booker prize with her 12 short story anthology, Heart Lamp in Kannada, BBC reported.
The short stories capture the hardships of Muslim women living in southern India.
It is the first short story collection to win the prestigious prize by Mushtaq between 1990 and 2023.
The stories were selected and translated into English from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi who will share the £50,000 prize.
“This book was born from the belief that no story is ever small, ” she said 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,” Mushtaq, who is also a lawyer, said.
Mushtaq, who initially studied the Quran in Urdu language at school, was later sent to a convent by her father at the age of 8. Thereafter her focus was on improving her knowledge in Kannada.
She told Vogue magazine, after a love marriage, she was told to wear a burqa and look after the domestic chores.
Once she tried to end her life by drenching in petrol when her husband pleaded with her by placing their child at my feet saying, ‘Don’t abandon us’,” she told The Week, BBC said.
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