"Meistens bleibt ja die Frau zuhause"

Winner of the International Booker Prize 2025
Translated directly from Kannada into German for the first time

Banu Mushtaq became internationally known when her work won the International Booker Prize 2025. Now her short story collection "Meistens bleibt ja die Frau zu Hause" appears in German for the first time - twelve stories about twelve women in India who push back against religious coercion, family expectations, and social injustice.

Ashraf is abandoned by her husband because she has given him only daughters. Jamila is to be stripped of her inheritance in the name of religion. Akhila lives with a man who barely speaks to her, yet lights up with enthusiasm every time he sees his mother. What connects these women: private choices are rarely only private. Mushtaq does not write solely about oppression - her characters face the indignities of daily life with wit, persistence, and a resilience that catches you off guard.

The texts were written over three decades, originally in Kannada, one of the major literary languages of southern India. Their first direct translation from Kannada into German is a literary rarity, opening a window onto a tradition that has received almost no attention in the German-speaking world.

Banu Mushtaq, born in 1948 in Hassan in the Indian state of Karnataka, is a writer, lawyer, and women's rights activist. She has published short stories, essays, poems, and a novel. The English edition of the collection, "Heart Lamp", won the International Booker Prize in 2025.