Until Tuesday, very few people outside the Kannada-phonic world were familiar with Banu Mushtaq's writings. Even after its publication last month, Heart Lamp - the collection of short stories written between 1990 and 2023, translated into English by Deepa Bhasthi - she was a veritable unknown in her own country outside Karnataka.
With Heart Lamp becoming the first short story collection to win the International Booker Prize this week, that near-anonymity ends. It underlines the expanding power of translation in making quality literature accessible to a wider readership.
The win also highlights another aspect in woeful short supply in India, a country brimming with literary wealth: branded platforms to recognise and evangelise sterling works of contemporary literature like Mushtaq's.
Over the last few decades, translation - especially into English, but also from a non-English Indian language to another - has gathered steam, making writers available for wider Indian and global readerships.
Much of how we value things hinges on curation. Anglo-American writers dominate the literary landscape because the ecosystem there - publishing houses, reviews, retailers, prizes, readers - invest in promoting, supplying literary works to a minority, but sustainable critical mass, of readers.
That's why even readers of literary writings in India are more likely to know about a debut author from Omaha than a legend from Odisha.
India needs more platforms - high-calibre, non-sarkari institutions with unabashed critical heft and cultural ambition. Not just rah-rah-ing each time an Indian wins an international award, or asking, 'But does the aam aadmi care?' As Mushtaq put it in her acceptance speech: 'No story is ever small.' What we do with it determines whether we understand its value, or not.
With Heart Lamp becoming the first short story collection to win the International Booker Prize this week, that near-anonymity ends. It underlines the expanding power of translation in making quality literature accessible to a wider readership.
The win also highlights another aspect in woeful short supply in India, a country brimming with literary wealth: branded platforms to recognise and evangelise sterling works of contemporary literature like Mushtaq's.
Over the last few decades, translation - especially into English, but also from a non-English Indian language to another - has gathered steam, making writers available for wider Indian and global readerships.
Much of how we value things hinges on curation. Anglo-American writers dominate the literary landscape because the ecosystem there - publishing houses, reviews, retailers, prizes, readers - invest in promoting, supplying literary works to a minority, but sustainable critical mass, of readers.
That's why even readers of literary writings in India are more likely to know about a debut author from Omaha than a legend from Odisha.
India needs more platforms - high-calibre, non-sarkari institutions with unabashed critical heft and cultural ambition. Not just rah-rah-ing each time an Indian wins an international award, or asking, 'But does the aam aadmi care?' As Mushtaq put it in her acceptance speech: 'No story is ever small.' What we do with it determines whether we understand its value, or not.
