Book Review Title: Heart Lamp: Selected Stories Author: Banu Mushtaq Translator: Deepa Bhasthi Publisher: Penguin Books, 2025 Pages: 216 The short stories in this slim volume that won the International Booker Prize 2025 present the voice of the voiceless women among the Muslims of Karnataka. The essential beauty of these stories lies in the way the inner rage of the women-characters is presented: quietly. The rage never becomes a blazing flame; it remains there within the character as a fraught flicker – as a yearning in some stories, helplessness in some others, and painful empathy in a few. Gender and patriarchy in conservative Muslim families, the tensions between restrictive tradition and personal freedom, and the complex emotional landscapes of women who are caught in a socio-religious system that may horrify people who are not acquainted with it – these are the themes in general. Every single character in these twelve stories is as real as t...
Cerebrate and Celebrate