Banu Mushtaqm, international author of the Booker Award from 2025 – selected stories, immersed in writing stories and how she rejects the dominance of the novel and lectures on Saturday at Mount Carmel College Foundation.
“No story is short,” said Mrs. Mushtaq, “I refuse the hegemony of the novel. The stories require another kind of championship; you have to paint the truth on a small screen,” she said.
On translation of her stories in Cannada, she said to English, “I wanted my voice to reach Karnataka. I wanted Western readers to feel our lives. And I believed even though no one else did.”
She encourages young people to write, she said, “You don’t have to wait for someone to approve your voice. You don’t need a perfect background; you have to live, observe, experience and write. You’ll be criticized, misunderstood.
Mrs. Mushtaq was thinking about how her early education shaped religious expectations, social prejudices and limited access to language. “I’ve been studying at Urdu school for two years without learning a single alphabet,” she recalled. “My father cried when he saw how little I learned. But he never gave up on me,” she said.
She answered the question and said she was writing about sex, politics and religion, because society tells women not to. “That’s exactly why I have to,” she said, adding, “My writing is not just imagination. It’s documentation.”
Published – July 12, 2025 21:33
