HEART LAMP: A BOOK I HAVE READ THE FASTEST

Some books don’t just tell stories, they whisper memories you thought you had forgotten. Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, the winner of the 2025 International Booker Prize, is one such masterpiece. I finished it faster than any book I’ve ever read, not because I was racing through it, but because it refused to let me go.

From the very first chapter, I found myself completely absorbed. Every story, every scene felt personal, like fragments of a world I once lived in. Perhaps that’s because I, too, come from an orthodox Muslim family, deeply rooted in its traditions and quiet struggles. The book mirrors the lives of middle-class and lower-middle-class Muslims in rural India, and I have spent my entire childhood in that very milieu, with narrow lanes echoing with the call to prayer, homes heavy with unspoken dreams, and people balancing faith, poverty, and hope in equal measure.

Banu Mushtaq doesn’t merely sketch the world she inhabits, she lets it pulse and live. Her figures aren’t distant archetypes, they could be your neighbour, your aunt, the shopkeeper down the road. In Heart Lamp she gives us Mehrun, casting herself into kerosene under the weight of betrayed hope, only to be pulled back by the trembling hands of her children. That moment feels terrifyingly possible. In another tale, women from a village rally in anger when a mosque authority ignores the medical needs of a child, and their collective grief breaks the silence. In Black Cobras, a mother pleads with the mutawalli for justice against domestic neglect, and the air thickens with frustration and grit. Mushtaq holds nothing back, the simmering tensions, the cracked prayers, the unsaid truths, and the fierce dignity. She finds the small flickers of resistance: the whispered defiance, the shared glance, the silent endurance. In her prose, these characters don’t just move, they breathe with you.

What struck me most was the authenticity with which she painted these lives. There’s no exaggeration, no glorification, just the simple poetry of reality. The dialects, the mannerisms, the silent resilience of women who carry entire households on their shoulders, everything feels painstakingly real. Even the smallest details, the flicker of a lantern during a power cut, the rustle of a prayer mat, the smell of wet earth after rain are captured with such tenderness that you can almost see and feel them.

Reading Heart Lamp felt like sitting by a window on a rainy afternoon, watching my own memories unfold outside. It reminded me of my roots, the innocence of growing up in a world that was poor in means but rich in values, the quiet dignity of people who find beauty in simplicity.

By the time I reached the last page, I realized I wasn’t just reading stories, I was rediscovering a part of myself I had left behind when I moved away to work and build a life elsewhere.

Heart Lamp isn’t merely a book, it’s a mirror that glows softly, showing you where you come from and what still flickers within you.

No wonder I read it the fastest, it was less of a read and more of a return home.

This post is a part of Blogchatter Half Marathon 2025