Timeless literature: 3 contemporary works poised to become future classics

‘Heart Lamp’ by Banu Mushtaq: Speaking truth to power

Banu Mushtaq’s Heart Lamp is a classical that volition endure adjacent aft decades. This English translation by Deepa Bhasthi of prime abbreviated stories by Mushtaq was awarded the International Booker Prize this year. Heart Lamp is not lone the archetypal translation from Kannada, but besides the archetypal abbreviated communicative postulation ever, to triumph this award. The designation has fixed a planetary level to Mushtaq’s almighty and humane prose. 

The stories picture with warmth and humanity the mundane lives of Muslim women successful southbound Karnataka. The connection is colloquial and afloat of feeling, containing desire, ambition, the joys and sorrows of children, the implacable unit of family. While rooted successful its circumstantial societal setting, Mushtaq’s penning is cosmopolitan and speaks against injustice. Fiction is lone 1 magnitude of her committedness to affirmative societal change. In her beingness arsenic a journalist, activist, lawyer, municipal assembly member, and convenor of the Bandaya (protest) literate movement, Mushtaq has ever demonstrated a content successful thoughtful, constructive, and empathetic action.

Heart Lamp is rich, textured, and profoundly affecting. The stories are superb with imagery adjacent arsenic they talk information to power. They springiness dependable to those who are seldom heard: older women, mediocre relatives, those astatine the margins. The elderly, the weak, the forgotten. When they bash speak, it is with almighty simplicity; occasionally, with flashes of defiance. In a little but illuminating exchange, successful a tiny colony of little than a 100 homes, an aged tailor challenges a grandma with a question that reaches crossed the full universe: “Do you know, Jamaal Bi, wherefore this full world, the sun, the moon, the entity and stars person been created?” The elder woman rebukes him: “Philosophy is not your exclusive property.” This infinitesimal recalls William Blake’s representation of seeing the satellite successful a atom of sand. 

As Mushtaq said successful her Booker acceptance speech, “No communicative is ever small... successful the tapestry of quality experience, each thread holds the value of the whole.”

— Uma Mahadevan-Dasgupta, IAS officer

****

‘Is A River Alive?’ by Robert Macfarlane: Where the water flows

As the twelvemonth 2025 came to an end, I stood listening to the Kunthipuzha River arsenic she made her mode crossed the bosom of Kerala’s Silent Valley National Park, and thought astir the galore radical who person protected it for decades, and that’s erstwhile Robert Macfarlane’s Is A River Alive? came to my mind. 

“Our destiny flows with that of the stream — and ever has,” helium writes successful what is, perhaps, 1 of his astir idiosyncratic books yet. It’s the publication I person kept by my penning desk, not lone due to the fact that it’s beautifully written and produced with the astir stunning extremity papers, but due to the fact that it’s a communicative I support returning to. 

The writer embarks upon 3 journeys — to Ecuador, India, and Canada — bookended by a homecoming to his section chalk watercourse successful Cambridge successful the U.K. The prose crackles, arsenic live arsenic the rivers helium meets. Macfarlane paints a vivid and respectful representation of h2o people, arsenic good arsenic the spaces wherever these awe-inspiring waterbodies dwell, portion underscoring the socio-political scenery that attempts to crook these rivers. 

These riverine stories are not constricted to their geographies, the narratives resonate crossed the planet, championing life-giving waterbodies everywhere.

— Bijal Vachharajani, children’s publication writer and editor

****

‘The Lucky Ones’ by Zara Chowdhary: The dilatory unravelling

Back erstwhile I work it successful July, I was reasonably definite I wouldn’t travel crossed a braver oregon much heartbreaking publication successful 2025. And I was right. Zara Chowdhary’s memoir The Lucky Ones was published a full twelvemonth earlier I work it but its urgency and relevance lone grew successful that play — arsenic I judge it volition proceed to, arsenic the satellite grapples with unchecked majoritarianism. 

The Lucky Ones is 1 of a fistful of books connected the Gujarat riots of 2002, but stands isolated successful its framing done the lens of a Muslim household arsenic it dilatory unravels successful the run-up to, during, and successful the aftermath of the violence. Startlingly well-written for a debut work, intimate, bold, unapologetic and profoundly empathetic, The Lucky Ones makes america retrieve that which excessively galore privation to forget.

— Sumana Mukherjee, writer and editor

Enjoyed speechmaking this article? Mail america your feedback astatine mag.letters@thehindu.co.in