Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq

Reading Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq—the winner of the International Booker Prize 2025—was, I'm not going to lie, a frustrating experience.

This is a collection of short stories about oppressed Muslim women, many of whom are trapped in painful, inhumane relationships, mostly with their husbands. So many of these women had no way out. No choice. Their circumstances, their communities, and the world around them offered little to no support.

Reading about their lives was infuriating.

Aside from this, do I think it deserves the prize? I think there must have been books in the shortlist/longlist I'd've liked better than this, though I haven't read the others. Also, I found the book repetitive and predictable. The theme, the stories, the characters, maybe even the dialogues.