The British Booker Prize goes to India

The award, worth £50,000 (almost €60,000), was presented on Tuesday evening at the Tate Modern Gallery in London. Author and jury chairman Max Porter called the book "something truly new for English readers: a radical translation of beautiful, vibrant, life-affirming stories." She accepts "this great honor not as an individual, but as a voice raised in chorus with so many others," Banu Mushtaq replied. "This moment feels like a thousand fireflies illuminating a single sky—brief, brilliant, and absolutely collective."

Author Banu Mushtaq, who lives in the state of Karnataka in southwest India , is committed to women's rights and against discrimination . She wrote these twelve short stories over 30 years, from 1990 to 2023. In them, she depicts the everyday lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in the southern part of the subcontinent.

Author advocates for women's rights

The Kannada language, or Kanarese, is native there, and Mushtaq wrote her stories in it. The 77-year-old is the first Kannada-speaking author to win the Booker Prize for books translated into English—along with her translator Deepa Bhasthi. Mushtaq is also only the second Indian author to receive the prestigious award.

Mushtaq says she was inspired to write her stories by people who turned to her for help. "The pain, suffering, and helpless lives of these women triggered a deep emotional response in me, which compelled me to write," said the 77-year-old. The jury praised her characters—from energetic grandmothers to awkward clergymen—as "astonishing portraits of survival and resilience."

The International Booker Prize is considered the world's most influential award for translated fiction. A new innovation is that the International Booker Prize is awarded for a short story collection. Last year, Jenny Erpenbeck became the first German to receive the prize.

sd/sw (dpa, afd, wikipedia)