Full Circle Book Club
hosted by Eleonora Balsano

Heart Lamp

by Banu Mushtaq

Culture | Thurs 9th Oct | 7:00-8:30 pm

*Doors open at 6.30pm. The book club begins at 7pm.

Heart Lamp is the winner of the International Booker Prize 2025. In 12 stories, author Banu Mushtaq exquisitely captures the everyday lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India.Published originally in the Kannada language between 1990 and 2023, praised for their dry and gentle humour, these portraits of family and community tensions testify to Mushtaq’s years as a journalist and lawyer, championing women’s rights and protesting all forms of caste and religious oppression.  

Written in a style at once witty, vivid, colloquial, moving and excoriating, it’s in her characters that Mushtaq emerges as an astonishing writer and observer of human nature, building disconcerting emotional heights out of a rich spoken style. Her opus has garnered both censure from conservative quarters as well as India’s most prestigious literary awards.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Banu Mushtaq is a writer, activist and lawyer in the state of Karnataka, southern India. Winner of the International Booker Prize 2025 for Heart Lamp.

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ADDITIONAL INFO 

FOOD & DRINK	EVENT SIZE	ACCESS
Bar open with snacks	Small (~10)	Available on request