Last night, Heart Lamp by writer and lawyer Banu Mushtaq made history as the first Kannada title to win the International Booker Prize. Translated by Deepa Bhasthi, the collection delivers sharp, unflinching portraits of South Indian womanhood—vivid glimpses into lives shaped by caste, religion, and patriarchy. “My stories are about women,” Mushtaq explained, “how religion, society, and politics demand unquestioning obedience from them, and in doing so, inflict inhumane cruelty, turning them into mere subordinates.”
It’s a moment that places Mushtaq among rarefied company. Over the decades, a select group of Indian and Indian-origin voices have broken through the global literary landscape to win the Booker or Pulitzer. From fierce political satire to tender immigrant narratives, their work has carved out space for complex, deeply rooted stories on the world’s biggest stages.
The Booker Prize Club
V.S. Naipaul – In a Free State (1971)
Though born in Trinidad, Naipaul was of Indian descent and remains a towering figure in postcolonial literature. His Booker-winning work deconstructed displacement and empire with a cold, unflinching eye.
Salman Rushdie – Midnight’s Children (1981)
Born in Bombay and holding British citizenship, Rushdie won for what many consider the definitive modern Indian novel. Blending magical realism with political allegory, Midnight’s Children is as provocative as it is poetic.
Arundhati Roy – The God of Small Things (1997)
The first Indian citizen to win the Booker, Roy’s debut novel brought a lyrical, devastating account of caste and forbidden love in Kerala to global attention. She’s been shaking things up ever since.
Kiran Desai – The Inheritance of Loss (2006)
Daughter of Anita Desai, Kiran took her own literary route to Booker glory. Her novel unpacks the immigrant psyche with sensitivity, contrasting life in the Himalayas with disillusionment in the West.
Aravind Adiga – The White Tiger (2008)
Adiga’s dark, irreverent look at India’s rising economic divide hit a nerve. The story of a cunning driver’s brutal climb from poverty to power is part confession, part indictment.
Geetanjali Shree (with Daisy Rockwell) – Tomb of Sand (2022)
The first Hindi novel to win the International Booker, Tomb of Sand follows an elderly widow’s post-grief transformation. It’s funny, radical, and completely unlike anything in English translation before it.
Banu Mushtaq (with Deepa Bhasthi) – Heart Lamp (2025)
This year, Mushtaq made history as the first Kannada author to win the International Booker. Her short story collection captures the inner lives of women in patriarchal, caste-bound communities with sharp, unflinching clarity.
The Pulitzer Laureates
Gobind Behari Lal – Reporting (1937)
The first Indian to win a Pulitzer, Lal was recognised for his science coverage at Harvard’s tercentenary. He also coined “science writer” as a job title before it became a thing.
Jhumpa Lahiri – Fiction (2000)
Born in London, raised in the US, Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies etched a quiet, aching portrait of the Indian diaspora. Her prose is spare but emotionally loaded—deceptively simple, deeply resonant.
Geeta Anand – Explanatory Reporting (2003)
As part of The Wall Street Journal team, Anand exposed corporate corruption at Tyco International. Her reporting was crisp, compelling, and consequences followed. She later wrote The Cure, which was adapted into a Hollywood film.
Siddhartha Mukherjee – General Nonfiction (2011)
His genre-defying biography of cancer, The Emperor of All Maladies, reads like history, memoir, and science textbook all rolled into one. Born in Delhi, Mukherjee bridged two worlds with astonishing insight.
Vijay Seshadri – Poetry (2014)
Raised in Ohio but born in Bangalore, Seshadri’s Pulitzer-winning 3 Sections plays with form and language, meditating on time, memory, and self with cerebral elegance.
Channi Anand, Mukhtar Khan & Dar Yasin – Feature Photography (2020)
The Associated Press trio risked it all to document daily life in Kashmir during the post-Article 370 blackout. Their photos are haunting, beautiful, and deeply human.
Danish Siddiqui, Adnan Abidi, Amit Dave & Sanna Irshad Mattoo – Feature Photography (2022)
Reuters’ photographers captured the brutal chaos of India’s second COVID wave. From burning pyres to gasping hospitals, their work became the visual memory of a national crisis. Siddiqui’s award was posthumous—he died later that year covering conflict in Afghanistan.
Megha Rajagopalan – International Reporting (2021)
She cracked open China’s network of Uyghur detention camps with satellite imagery and fearless fieldwork. Rajagopalan, born to Indian parents in the US, showed what journalism can still do.
Neil Bedi – Local Reporting (2021)
Bedi’s work at Tampa Bay Times exposed serious lapses in child welfare programmes in Florida. His meticulous reporting led to real reform and saved lives.
