If you follow my blog you’ll probably realise that I mostly read prize-winning books. That’s not because I think prize winners are the only books worth reading (sometimes I don’t even rate them all that highly). No, I read the prize winners because I get to read books that I wouldn’t otherwise pick up – like Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, which won the 2025 International Booker Prize.
And why would I have turned away from Heart Lamp? Well for a start, it’s a collection of short stories and if it’s a fiction-fix I’m after, I’ll reach for a novel every time. And then there’s the book blurb, which hails Bustaq’s stories as having a ‘deep contextual understanding of patriarchal institutions and with sympathy to the modern realities of Muslim women’, which sounds worthy but heavy, heavy; dull even.
As it turns out, I needn’t have worried on that score. Yes, there’s a lot about women’s power and lack of it in this slim collection – apparently Mustaq was a journalist and lawyer who championed women’s rights – but her stories are wry, witty and occasionally downright weird (in a good way). Stone Slabs for Shaista Mahal explores the longevity, or not, of a man’s professed love for his wife. Fire Rain sees a local leader bolstering his position in the community by having a body exhumed from a Hindu cemetery and reburied in a Muslim one, while being blind to what’s occurring in his own family. In Black Cobras a community leader who ignores an abandoned wife’s petition for justice for her sick child, is taught a lesson in female solidarity and soft-power. In High-Heeled Shoe, a man becomes fixated on a specific pair of high-heeled shoes worn by his sister-in-law.
There are eleven stories in all, which were originally published in the Kannada language. Apparently Kannada is spoken mainly in the state of Karnataka in southwestern India and has 44 million native speakers, as well as being a second language for 15 million speakers. In other words, it’s a language spoken by a population roughly that of Italy – and I had to look it up! An added bonus for a linguaphile like me is the fascinating translator’s note at the end of the collection.
Rating: ** Worth reading
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