4 min readNew DelhiMay 20, 2026 11:25 AM IST
First published on: May 21, 2025 at 05:44 PM IST
Banu Mushtaq Booker Prize: “If I have seen further,” Isaac Newton wrote in 1675, “it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
For Kannada literature, that giant was UR Ananthamurthy. In 2013, the 80-year-old literary icon became the first Kannada writer ever shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with global luminaries such as Alice Munro and Philip Roth. Though the £60,000 award went to American short-story writer Lydia Davis that year, Ananthamurthy’s nomination cracked open a door, which remained tantalisingly ajar until this year, when Banu Mushtaq kicked it down completely.
Now, 12 years after that near-miss, Kannada literature has its watershed moment as Mushtaq’s Heart Lamp (translated by Deepa Bhasthi) has won the 2025 International Booker Prize, fulfilling Ananthamurthy’s dream and cementing Kannada’s place on the world literary stage. What Ananthamurthy’s nomination began, Mushtaq’s win completes, in turn opening doors for regional Indian literatures on the world stage.
Who was Ananthamurthy?
Born in 1932 in Melige, Karnataka, Udupi Rajagopalacharya Ananthamurthy reshaped Kannada literature as a writer and critic. A central figure in the Navya (modernist) movement, he interrogated caste and morality. His classic Samskara remains a touchstone and was later adapted into a critically acclaimed film.
Over his long career, Ananthamurthy received the Jnanpith Award, India’s highest literary honour, and the Padma Bhushan. His nomination for the Man Booker International Prize in 2013 was for his entire corpus of work, which includes novels such as Bhava, Bharathipura, and Avasthe, alongside short stories that have been translated into multiple Indian and European languages.
The Booker panel praised him for the humanity and complexity of his fiction, which explored the friction between traditional values and modernity. Though he did not win, the nomination placed Kannada literature in the global spotlight for the first time.
How Banu Mushtaq wrote the next chapter
In many ways, Banu Mushtaq represents the next chapter of the story Ananthamurthy began. Born in Hassan, Karnataka in 1948, she emerged during the Bandaya (protest) movement of the 1970s. This was a literary current influenced by writers like Ananthamurthy, but focused on amplifying the voices of Dalits, women, minorities and other marginalised communities. Her work brings forth the stories of Muslim women often silenced in both mainstream narratives and within their own communities.
Her International Booker-winning Heart Lamp (originally Edeya Hanate) spans three decades and comprises 12 stories that are a meditation on injustice and resilience. For her pains, in 2000, she became the target of a fatwa and survived a knife attack after advocating for Muslim women’s right to pray in mosques.
Geetanjali Shree to Banu Mushtaq: A literary continuum
Geetanjali Shree’s 2022 International Booker win for Tomb of Sand (translated by Daisy Rockwell) also broke a glass ceiling, creating a blueprint for Indian writing for conquering global literary imagination.
Just as Shree’s win made space for Hindi, Ananthamurthy’s 2013 Booker nomination prepared the ground for Mushtaq’s triumph. Where Ananthamurthy interrogated the internal contradictions of Hindu orthodoxy through metaphysical allegory, Mushtaq exposes gendered repression within Islamic traditions.
Together, they form a continuum, proving that India’s bhasha literature articulates the universal.
Man Booker versus International Booker
The Man Booker International Prize, as it existed from 2005 to 2015, honoured a writer’s lifetime contribution to fiction, rather than a single work.
The International Booker Prize, in its new form since 2016, awards a specific work of fiction in English translation. Geetanjali Shree became the first Indian writer to win the International Booker Prize, while Mushtaq is the first Kannada writer to win this version of the prize.
Banu Mushtaq Booker Prize: What Ananthamurthy’s nomination began, Mushtaq’s win completes—not as an end, but as a powerful new beginning for Indian literature on the world stage. (Express Photos) 
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