“Like most of us, I don’t read translated fiction to learn another language!”

The white male Booktuber angrily announced to the world in his ‘book review’ of Heart Lamp.

His words, bloated with ignorance and reeking of racism, initially infuriated me, but upon reflection, they made me realize how significant Heart Lamp’s win at the 2025 International Booker Prize was.  

Heart Lamp, written by Banu Mushtaq over the course of 13 years in her native language, Kannada, translated by Deepa Bhasthi into English, is a short story collection that won the International Booker Prize this year, which is arguably one of the most prestigious book awards in the world. Revolving around the issues faced by girls and women in the Muslim communities of southern India, Mushtaq’s collection of 12 stories gained international popularity and critical acclaim for not only its nuanced exploration of the multiple kinds of power structures and dynamics that shape everyday life in India but also for its astute observations about the human race, in general. However, along with all the love and praise that the book received last year, it was also not spared criticism and censure, with many questioning its Booker win.

In his book review, the white male YouTuber went on a long rant about Heart Lamp, calling Mushtaq’s writing “punishing” and accusing Bhasthi of being an “irresponsible” translator because she did not provide the English meanings of the Kannada words and phrases used in the stories. And while other reviewers weren’t quite as crude as this particular man, I was quite shocked to find that there was a large group of people with big followings on social media who shared his views. A week before the big Booker Prize announcement came out, and an hour after I had finished reading Heart Lamp, I went on the bookish side of the internet to see whether other readers and netizens were equally floored by Mushtaq’s storytelling prowess and by Bhasthi’s ability to capture the essence of Mushtaq’s words and her world. Instead, I found many bookstagram and booktube accounts questioning Heart Lamp’s popularity and rating it very low on their Booker prize prediction lists. And while I understand that reading tastes are subjective and it isn’t uncommon for people to not like a popular book, there was something about these reviews and ratings that rubbed me the wrong way. I noticed that they all seemed to follow a similar script- it was no coincidence that a majority of the people who called Heart Lamp “a difficult read” and found the stories unrelatable because the context was alien to them and because the names sounded too “foreign” and similar to each other were either white and/or based in either the United States of America or the United Kingdom. A lot of these reviewers complained that the multilingual aspect of the book, especially the “Indian phrases” sprinkled within the pages, hindered them from becoming fully immersed in the stories. The translator’s choice to retain words from Kannada in the translation especially frustrated them. 

It felt as though all of these people were subtly asking the same question: How dare these Indian writers and translators expect us, the readers from the First World, to understand their weird-sounding ethnic names and force us to do the added labor of finding out the meanings of words and phrases in their regional languages? 

And while it would have been easier to dismiss their surface-level commentary and covertly racist remarks just as they dismissed Heart Lamp, I wanted to see what prompted such responses to the text. Their comments and questions made me dig deeper and ask some questions of my own:

Why do we, as individuals and a society, feel compelled to read poetry and prose that was originally written in another language? If, as that one white YouTuber claimed, “most of us” do not read translated works to learn a new language, then what is it that attracts us to the practice of reading about things that are far from and far beyond our own immediate understanding, socio-cultural contexts, geographic locations and lived experiences? Is our choice to read translated literature motivated by a desire to know other humans and get closer to other cultures, or is it chiefly driven by the need to be perceived as “intellectual” and well-read?

***

As I began to examine my own motivations for reading translated literature, I had to take a quick dive back into my early years as a reader. As someone who grew up in a lower-middle-class household, where traveling and going on holidays was not within my family’s economic means, books were my never-expiring ticket to see the world and its wonders. Ever since I became old enough to read, I wanted to devour anything and everything that I could get my hands on; it didn’t matter which country it was from or which language the work was originally written in. I remember getting excited for the library period in school and looking forward to the monthly trips that my siblings and I took to the thrift market in Darya Ganj in Old Delhi. And whenever my uncle, who worked at the Delhi Public Library; let me accompany him to his workplace, I was ecstatic at the thought of being near books from all parts of the world. The books I chose to read as a child ranged from novels written in English, Hindi and Urdu to stories translated from foreign languages such as Russian, Arabic and German. I enjoyed reading about a completely different cultural context from mine; and when I encountered words in languages that were not English or Hindi, it did not stop me from reading further. In fact, it only made me more interested in looking up the fascinating new words and find out their meanings. 

I believe that my experience with and feelings about translated literature are so starkly different from the booktubers whom I mentioned earlier because unlike them, I grew up in a country that has always been culturally and linguistically diverse. In the kind of environment that I was brought up in, it was not an unusual thing to switch between two or more languages in the span of a single conversation. Because of this reason, it never felt jarring or annoying to engage with multiple different languages at once in books. I remember reading Indian poet and critic K. Satchinandan’s work titled Reflections: Rethinking Translations during my university days for a research paper; and his comment about Indians having a ‘translating consciousness’ “embedded in them” from their birth deeply resonated with me. It made me realise how we, people who come from a place where cultures and languages easily intermingle and overlap, are so used to using different languages on an everyday basis that most of us don’t find it odd when we see a word in Hindi or Telugu or Punjabi written next to a word in English, Korean or French. 

But it is not difficult to see why some people, specifically people from the Western part of the world who are only familiar with one language, specifically the English language, and those who have lived their entire lives believing in this one language’s superiority, have issues with reading books that includes words from other languages (especially the languages and regional dialects of the countries in the East). Keeping this in mind, I now realise that I shouldn’t have been surprised to see many Western book reviewers disparage Heart Lamp’s success and refuse to even attempt to understand the significance and message of Mushtaq’s stories.  

***

It may sound like an exaggeration, but to me, Heart Lamp beating the odds and winning the Booker Prize felt like someone had lit a lamp of hope on a dark night. In a world where people often reject and overlook anything they do not fully understand or want to understand, Heart Lamp’s win feels extremely significant. Although I was not very familiar with Mushtaq and Bhasthi’s work before reading this collection, seeing them accept a prestigious literary award filled me with immense pride and joy. At the ceremony, writer and presenter Max Porter also expressed how many of us felt about the book when he called the work “a radical translation” and special book for the way in which it “ruffles language to create new textures in a plurality of Englishes.” 

Mushtaq’s moving acceptance speech, in which she spoke of the need for stories that are written in languages other than English to be read and acknowledged, also reiterated the power of translated literature and the need to champion more such writing. It reminded the viewers watching that Heart Lamp’s win was not just a win for Mushtaq and her translator Deepa Bhasthi but also a moment of collective triumph for every one of us whose voice has been relegated to the margins throughout history. 

Bhasthi, who followed Mushtaq, also used the platform to highlight the necessity of challenging “historical erasures” and exclusionary literary practices. She stood by the bold statement she made in the Translator’s Note, in which she wrote that her decision to forgo the addition of footnotes and the English meanings of Kannada words and phrases was a deliberate and carefully thought-out decision as the use of italics “serves to announce words as imported from another language, exoticizing them and keeping them alien to English”. By not italicising the Kannada words, she wanted to give readers a chance to read Mushtaq’s stories “without interference” and “perhaps even learn a new word or two in another language” while reading. 

While prizes and external validation are not everything, Heart Lamp’s win felt extremely special and important because it is a step towards the inclusion of marginalized and ignored voices and experiences into the literary canon and into mainstream cultural discourse. Its success encourages us to forge our own paths, reclaim our stories and never compromise our authenticity and voice to appease others. Heart Lamp and its stories feel authentic and rooted in reality because the author and translator refused to play by the rules and follow Western ideas and beliefs about writing and translation. I believe that the collection wouldn’t have left such a marked impression on one’s mind if it wasn’t for Arifa (one of the characters) saying “hakhdaar tarse toh angaaaar ka nuuh barse!” or without the deft use of colloquialisms or the inclusion of words and phrases like ‘rii’, ‘bhaisahab’ and ‘shining-shining’ in the stories. If you take these idiosyncrasies and details away, Heart Lamp loses its rich flavor and depth. I am glad that Mushtaq and Bhasthi chose to follow their own heart and did not allow others to dictate how they should write and who they should write for!

While many may try to underplay the significance of Heart Lamp’s win, I believe that it is a significant moment in literary history and a poignant reminder to all of us, especially those who have lived on or been forced to live on the margins and in the footnotes, that we must speak, write and live as we think right and not as the world wants us to.  tes, that we must speak, write and live as we think right and not as the world wants us to.  

^{(Personal Essay by Anam Kazmi)}

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