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lizzillia 's review for:
Heart Lamp: Selected Stories
by Banu Mushtaq
The winner of this year’ International Booker Prize. I’m not very good when it comes to short story collections, they don’t often grab me and sadly this one didn’t. This is translated from the Kannada language and the stories are about the lives of women in the Kannada community in India. These stories touch upon religion, patriarchy and the caste system. The majority are about the women, the wives who are neglected and abused, who are cast aside so that the husband can remarry, the wives who come second to their mother-in-law. The caste system also highlights the poverty some of the women suffer, one story about a woman who gives her savings to a higher caste woman so that she can buy her a coffin - which she doesn’t. The saddest story for me was the final one, a letter to Allah telling him of her life and asking him to put himself in her shoes. I’m glad that I have read this even if the stories didn;t really impact me.