Heart Lamp
Banu Mushtaq, And Other Stories, £14.99

IN Heart Lamp: Selected Stories, matters marinate or smoulder. Readers get to pore over paragraphs while issues ignite. 

Amid her precise environments, and their host of vivid social-class enmity/familial powerplay, writer Banu Mushtaq delineates volatile occurrence with trustworthy control. Her succinct flair in sketching distinct three-dimensional allies and adversaries sets her arena for pivotal realisation and outcome. I’m put in mind of the sparking of domestic pyrotechnics, blue touchpaper and all.

In translation by Deepa Bhasthi, many choice Kannada words persist. These are never italicised. The beauty of this choice means not only that the music of given names; details and condition of dress; inventories of foods – and reference to who’s doing the cooking – each remain powerfully intact. Original words are also used where legal forces and devices of tradition come into play and this all feels right, in recognition of documentary authenticity and cultural nuance. English language readers will sense and respect complex entities (Sharia, for example) while protagonists — many of them adorable against the odds — maintain voices of credible immediacy.