"Heart Lamp: Selected Stories" by Banu Mushtaq and Deepa Bhashti

Hello, Litbugs!

For August we're reading "Heart Lamp" by Manu Mushtaq (and Deepa Bhasthi- translator)!

We are meeting in person at David Lam Park in Vancouver. Please bring a camping chair or blanket.

Once RSVPs are tallied and attendee numbers are finalized, the specific location in the park will be selected and messaged to you (via Meetup messages) a few hours before the event. This is due to needing to scout out out an available spot in the park! Please allow time before the event start time to reach the spot in the park.

Here's the description of the book from Good Reads:
Winner of the International Booker Prize 2025

In the twelve stories of Heart Lamp, 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, in which she tirelessly championed women’s rights and protested all forms of caste and religious oppression. Written in a style at once witty, vivid, colloquial, moving and excoriating, it’s in her characters – the sparky children, the audacious grandmothers, the buffoonish maulvis and thug brothers, the oft-hapless husbands, and the mothers above all, surviving their feelings at great cost – 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 India’s most prestigious literary awards; this is a collection sure to be read for years to come.

Looking forward to meeting/seeing everyone!
Happy Reading!
-Shadi