Heart Lamp: Winner of the 2025 International Booker Prize

Every now and then you come across a book that won’t make your all time favorites list; but will impact you in profound way. “Heart Lamp” by Banu Mushtaq is in that category. The 2025 International Booker Prize winner is an enlightening. Using short story format, Mushtaq walks us through the crushing lived experiences of Muslim Indians. Most of these perspectives are centered on the women living under the weight of a repressive patriarchal system. The collection summarizes, men behaving badly for the most part. The suffering that the women, children, and even men go through becomes very heavy and emotionally taxing as you work through the book. You can’t help but feeling frustrated while learning so much about the underrepresented experiences of others. I landed at struggling to accept that countries have the sovereignty to operate as they want while wishing deeply to overturn the stifling structure. Overall, the book does a lot to demonstrate the power of writing and story telling to create a sense of agency and cathartic release for our characters. For each the themes of sisterhood, navigating survival in a complex Indian tapestry, finding coping mechanisms is all consuming. For the reader, the fact that repressive patriarchal systems cut off human flourishing. Because to limit women’s individual and collective potential limits the potential of all.