Banu Mushtaq

Banu Mushtaq (born 3 April 1948) is a Kannada-language Indian writer, activist, and lawyer from the southern state of Karnataka. She is best known for Heart Lamp, a selection of her short stories translated by Deepa Bhasthi, which won the International Booker Prize in 2025. She has published six short story collections, a novel, an essay collection, and a poetry collection. Her work has been translated into Urdu, Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, and English.