Indian author Banu Mushtaq and translator Deepa Bhasthi won the International Booker Prize for fiction recently for Heart Lamp, a collection of 12 short stories written over a period of more than 30 years and which chronicle the everyday lives and struggles of women in southern India.

It is the first time the award has been given to a collection of short stories. Bhasthi is the first Indian translator — and ninth female translator — to win the prize since it took on its current form in 2016. Mushtaq is the sixth female author to be awarded the prize since then.

The stories, described by the jury as “beautiful, busy, life-affirming”, are written in Kannada, a language spoken by around 65 million people, primarily in southern India, with the collection praised for the radical nature of its translation that sheds light on “women’s lives, reproductive rights, faith, caste, power and oppression”.

The book, which beat five other finalists, comprises stories written from 1990 to 2023. They were selected and curated by translator Bhasthi, who was keen to preserve the multilingual nature of southern India in her translation.

Mushtaq, who is a lawyer and activist as well as a writer, has said that her stories “are about women — how religion, society and politics demand unquestioning obedience from them, and in doing so, inflict inhumane cruelty upon them, turning them into mere subordinates”.

The 50,000-pound prize money is to be divided equally between author and translator. Each is presented with a trophy too.

The International Booker Prize is awarded every year. It is run alongside the Booker Prize for English-language fiction, which this year will be handed out November 10 with a cash prize also of 50,000 pounds.