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Banu Mushtaq conjures up an imagery, half-jokingly, erstwhile asked astir her penning process. It has her lasting with swords connected either hand, fending disconnected opponents from either broadside and penning with the remaining imaginary hand. That representation is successful a mode justified by the benignant of adversities the International Booker Prize victor had to woody with implicit the past respective decades of her penning career.
Later, she answers the question successful a much applicable sense. She dictates poems and abbreviated stories to the voice-to-text bundle successful her phone, often erstwhile she is travelling, arsenic her enactment arsenic a lawyer and an activistic leaves her precious small clip to beryllium down and enactment pen to paper.
“Yesterday, erstwhile we stopped for meal connected the mode to the airport, I recovered the assemblage connection and behaviour of the idiosyncratic who was serving america to beryllium interesting. By the clip I reached the airport, I had dictated a poem titled A Normal Incident,” she says, displaying the Kannada poem successful her mobile, during an interrogation to The Hindu connected the sidelines of the 4th Kerala Legislature International Book Festival (KLIBF), which began present connected Wednesday (January 7, 2026).
Booker prize
Ms. Mushtaq’s publication Heart Lamp: Selected Stories, a postulation of 12 abbreviated stories selected from the galore she has written betwixt 1990 and 2023, translated to English by Deepa Bhasthi, won the International Booker Prize for 2025.
She reminisces astir her aboriginal days arsenic portion of the Bandaya (rebellion) question that swept Kannada lit successful the 1970s, an acquisition which has influenced her work.
“As a subordinate of Bandaya, the basal compulsion was that writers should beryllium activists too. They should place with Dalits, farmers, feminist movements and section connection movements, instrumentality up issues of the marginalised and the downtrodden, whose voices did not person capable spot to beryllium heard. The writers had to lend their dependable to them,” she says.
But arsenic a Muslim pistillate writer, she had to woody with a full antithetic acceptable of dilemmas arsenic to what would go the worldly of her literature.
“When we had discussions with the Bandaya writers and readers, they told maine to accumulate the assorted experiences and grey areas, the beardown notions of patriarchy and alienation that are portion of the Muslim experience. That was the toughest job, due to the fact that past I had to enactment arsenic a captious insider. I cognize truthful galore ins and outs of the community, their weaknesses and their happiness. When I represent a Muslim, helium volition not lone beryllium godly, but demonish too, which is erstwhile radical successful the assemblage started saying that I americium exposing oregon targeting them erstwhile they are already successful trouble. They don’t adjacent deliberation that this is literature,” she says.
Her younger sister, who accompanies her, remembers the clip successful 2002 erstwhile an organisation issued a ‘fatwa’ against her pursuing the comments she made successful an interview.
Self-censor
“All these pressures, each these allegations from extremist Muslims arsenic good arsenic the close helping person led maine to self-censor a bit. When I commencement writing, it does not travel easy to me. I person to measurement each connection and its implications,” says Ms. Mushtaq.
She says that the simple, accessible connection of her stories, without overmuch literate adornments, was a conscious determination to scope the largest fig of people.
“I wanted to accidental immoderate astir Muslims are practising is not successful the existent tone of Islam, it is conscionable the patriarchy successful the guise of Islam. It is not the religion talking, it is immoderate radical talking successful the sanction of religion. Most of the women characters successful my stories speech successful this tone. Most of my protagonists are uneducated, but they person clarity of thought,” she says.
Her practise arsenic a lawyer has provided her opportunities to instrumentality successful a batch of varied experiences, immoderate of which person go subjects of her stories. “When faced with uncommon circumstances and challenges, radical respond successful unique, unexpected ways. One conscionable has to witnesser it for it to aboriginal crook into stories,” she says.
The enactment besides means that abbreviated communicative is her astir preferred form. A caller and her autobiography has remained astatine a half-way constituent for the past 2 years. She hopes to instrumentality a interruption from each the Booker-led globe-trotting to implicit these soon.
