Petals and thorns: India’s Booker prize author Banu Mushtaq

This photograph taken on May 31, 2025 shows Indian lawyer, activist and now International Booker Prize winner Banu Mushtaq posing with the book 'Heart Lamp' at her residence in Hassan, in India's Karnataka state. (Photo by Aishwarya Kumar / AFP)
This photograph taken on May 31, 2025 shows Indian lawyer, activist and now International Booker Prize winner Banu Mushtaq posing with the book 'Heart Lamp' at her residence in Hassan, in India's Karnataka state. (Photo by Aishwarya Kumar / AFP)
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Updated 08 June 2025
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Petals and thorns: India’s Booker prize author Banu Mushtaq

Petals and thorns: India’s Booker prize author Banu Mushtaq
  • Mushtaq won the coveted literature prize as the first author writing in Kannada — an Indian regional language
  • As a young girl worried about her future, she said she started writing to improve her “chances of marriage”

HASSAN, India: All writers draw on their experience, whether consciously or not, says Indian author Banu Mushtaq — including the titular tale of attempted self-immolation in her International Booker Prize-winning short story collection.
Mushtaq, who won the coveted literature prize as the first author writing in Kannada — an Indian regional language — said the author’s responsibility is to reflect the truth.
“You cannot simply write describing a rose,” said the 77-year-old, who is also a lawyer and activist.
“You cannot say it has got such a fragrance, such petals, such color. You have to write about the thorns also. It is your responsibility, and you have to do it.”
Her book “Heart Lamp,” a collection of 12 powerful short stories, is also her first book translated into English, with the prize shared with her translator Deepa Bhasthi.
Critics praised the collection for its dry and gentle humor, and its searing commentary on the patriarchy, caste and religion.
Mushtaq has carved an alternative path in life, challenging societal restrictions and perceptions.
As a young girl worried about her future, she said she started writing to improve her “chances of marriage.”
Born into a Muslim family in 1948, she studied in Kannada, which is spoken mostly in India’s southern Karnataka state by around 43 million people, rather than Urdu, the language of Islamic texts in India and which most Muslim girls learnt.
She attended college, and worked as a journalist and also as a high school teacher.

Constricted life

But after marrying for love, Mushtaq found her life constricted.
“I was not allowed to have any intellectual activities. I was not allowed to write,” she said.
“I was in that vacuum. That harmed me.”
She recounted how as a young mother aged around 27 with possible postpartum depression, and ground down by domestic life, had doused petrol on herself and on the “spur of a moment” readied to set herself on fire.
Her husband rushed to her with their three-month-old daughter.
“He took the baby and put her on my feet, and he drew my attention to her and he hugged me, and he stopped me,” Mushtaq told AFP.
The experience is nearly mirrored in her book — in its case, the protagonist is stopped by her daughter.
“People get confused that it might be my life,” the writer said.
Explaining that while not her exact story, “consciously or subconsciously, something of the author, it reflects in her or his writing.”
Books line the walls in Mushtaq’s home, in the small southern Indian town of Hassan.
Her many awards and certificates — including a replica of the Booker prize she won in London in May — are also on display.
She joked that she was born to write — at least that is what a Hindu astrological birth chart said about her future.
“I don’t know how it was there, but I have seen the birth chart,” Mushtaq said with a laugh, speaking in English.
The award has changed her life “in a positive way,” she added, while noting the fame has been a little overwhelming.
“I am not against the people, I love people,” she said referring to the stream of visitors she gets to her home.
“But with this, a lot of prominence is given to me, and I don’t have any time for writing. I feel something odd... Writing gives me a lot of pleasure, a lot of relief.”

‘The writer is always pro-people’
Mushtaq’s body of work spans six short story collections, an essay collection and poetry.
The stories in “Heart Lamp” were chosen from the six short story collections, dating back to 1990.
The Booker jury hailed her characters — from spirited grandmothers to bumbling religious clerics — as “astonishing portraits of survival and resilience.”
The stories portray Muslim women going through terrible experiences, including domestic violence, the death of children and extramarital affairs.
Mushtaq said that while the main characters in her books are all Muslim women, the issues are universal.
“They (women) suffer this type of suppression and this type of exploitation, this type of patriarchy everywhere,” she said. “A woman is a woman, all over the world.”
While accepting that even the people for whom she writes may not like her work, Mushtaq said she remained dedicated to providing wider truths.
“I have to say what is necessary for the society,” she said.
“The writer is always pro-people... With the people, and for the people.”


What We Are Reading Today: ‘Physics of the Tropical Atmosphere and Tropical Cyclones’

What We Are Reading Today: ‘Physics of the Tropical Atmosphere and Tropical Cyclones’
Updated 13 July 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘Physics of the Tropical Atmosphere and Tropical Cyclones’

What We Are Reading Today: ‘Physics of the Tropical Atmosphere and Tropical Cyclones’

Author: Kerry Emanuel

“Physics of the Tropical Atmosphere and Tropical Cyclones” provides readers with a firm grounding in the observations, theory, and modeling of tropical weather systems and tropical cyclones.

How and why do tropical cyclones form? What physics underpins their genesis, intensification, structure, and power?

This authoritative and accessible book tackles these and other questions, providing a unifying framework for understanding most tropical weather systems.


What We Are Reading Today: The Seed Detective by Adam Alexander

What We Are Reading Today: The Seed Detective by Adam Alexander
Updated 13 July 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: The Seed Detective by Adam Alexander

What We Are Reading Today: The Seed Detective by Adam Alexander

In “The Seed Detective,” Adam Alexander shares his own stories of seed hunting, with the origin stories behind many of our everyday vegetable heroes.

Taking us on a journey that began when we left the life of the hunter-gatherer to become farmers, he tells tales of globalization, political intrigue, colonization and serendipity – describing how these vegetables and their travels have become embedded in our food cultures.


What We Are Reading Today: ‘What Matters in Jane Austen?’

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Updated 13 July 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘What Matters in Jane Austen?’

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  • In this work he poses 20 questions such as: “Why is the weather important?” “How much money is enough?” “Why is Darcy so rude?” and “What do the characters call each other?”

Author: John Mullan

To mark 250 years since the birth of one of the most famous women authors in English literature, John Mullan’s “What Matters in Jane Austen? Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved” has been reissued.

First published in 2012, the book is a kind of literary scavenger hunt, with Mullan as guide — witty, knowing and visibly delighted by the patterns and puzzles he uncovers.

We go on the journey with him, uncovering the meanings embedded in the seemingly minor, but not minute, details of Austen’s fiction.

The Lord Northcliffe professor of modern English literature at University College London, Mullan is a leading authority on Austen. He has edited “Sense and Sensibility” and “Emma” for Oxford World’s Classics and has published widely on 18th- and 19th-century literature.

In this work he poses 20 questions such as: “Why is the weather important?” “How much money is enough?” “Why is Darcy so rude?” and “What do the characters call each other?”

That last question forms one of the book’s most interesting chapters for me. It’s about the seemingly stealthy and subtle ways in which the characters address others by a name and the power of not saying their name at all.

In Austen’s world, names are never casual. A shift from a formal title to a first name can signal a change in status, desire or familiarity. A name can be a quiet form of rebellion or a coded expression of closeness or longing. It matters whether someone is “Miss Bennet” or “Elizabeth,” whether a man dares to use her given name directly and whether that liberty is permitted or returned.

Again and again, Mullan shows us how much Austen could signal with the smallest of choices. What seems like a passing detail is likely loaded with meaning.

This new edition, with a fresh preface, is a fitting tribute to Austen’s longevity. Rather than framing her novels as relics to admire, Mullan treats them as living texts full of sly codes and sharp decisions.

It offers fans of Austen’s work something they crave: evidence. A deep dive into the text itself.

By the end, the title becomes clear, not just because Mullan asked the right questions but because, through his close reading and sharp observations, we begin to get answers.

To Austen, who died in 1817, everything mattered: names, clothes, weather, silence. And more than two centuries later, her world — precise, constrained, emotionally charged — still has plenty to show and tell.

 


What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Stoic Mindset’

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Updated 12 July 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Stoic Mindset’

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  • Tuitert’s narrative begins with his own crucible: the pressure-cooker world of elite athletics, where injuries and setbacks threatened his career

Author: Mark Tuitert

Olympic champion speed skater Mark Tuitert merges ancient philosophy with modern resilience in “The Stoic Mindset,” published in 2024.

The guide transcends typical self-help tropes, offering strategies to transform adversity into strength through the principles of Stoicism. 

This ancient philosophy provides a tool kit for staying calm, focused, and strong in the face of life’s chaos. Emerging in Ancient Greece and later popularized in Rome, it is less about dusty theories and more about how to live well.

Tuitert’s narrative begins with his own crucible: the pressure-cooker world of elite athletics, where injuries and setbacks threatened his career. His discovery of Stoicism became his mental armor. The book meticulously unpacks core tenets, focusing on actionable responses, reframing obstacles as opportunities, and cultivating “amor fati” (love of fate). 

What resonates most is Tuitert’s rejection of passive acceptance. Instead, he advocates active resilience, using journaling, mindfulness, and preemptive adversity training to fortify mental agility.

His chapter on failure dissects how embracing vulnerability fuels growth, illustrated by his comeback from a career-threatening injury to clinch gold at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

Tuitert’s prose is refreshingly pragmatic. He avoids academic jargon, grounding Seneca and Marcus Aurelius’ wisdom in relatable anecdotes — from navigating corporate burnout to parenting challenges. His emphasis on practice over theory stands out as well. 

Some may criticize the athletic parallels as niche, but Tuitert universalizes them deftly.

While examining Tuitert’s practical Stoicism, I happened to contrast his Olympic-forged resilience with Nietzsche’s fiery critique of Stoic detachment, revealing how one stabilizes storms while the other ignites revolutions.

I found that Tuitert seeks mastery through emotional discipline, whereas Nietzsche champions vitality through embracing chaos.

In an era of digital overload and anxiety, “The Stoic Mindset” is a tactical manifesto for clarity.

Tuitert’s genius lies in making a 2,000-year-old philosophy feel urgently contemporary, proving that true victory is not avoiding storms but learning to dance in the rain.

 


What We Are Reading Today: ‘Following the Bend’

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Updated 12 July 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘Following the Bend’

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  • In this accessible and uniquely personal book, Ellen Wohl explains how to “read” a river, blending the latest science with her own personal experiences as a geologist and naturalist who has worked on rivers for more than three decades

Author: ELLEN WOHL 

When we look at a river, either up close or while flying over a river valley, what are we really seeing? “Following the Bend” takes readers on a majestic journey by water to find answers, along the way shedding light on the key concepts of modern river science, from hydrology and water chemistry to stream and wetland ecology.

In this accessible and uniquely personal book, Ellen Wohl explains how to “read” a river, blending the latest science with her own personal experiences as a geologist and naturalist who has worked on rivers for more than three decades.