Deepa Bhasthi

Deepa Bhasthi was born in 1983 in Madikeri, in the Kodagu district of Karnataka, where she still lives and works. She trained in journalism at Mangalore University and worked for newspapers and magazines in Bangalore before turning to freelance writing. Her essays, columns and cultural criticism on art, literature and the politics of culture have appeared in dozens of Indian and international publications.

She works in Kannada and English, and she has said that translation is only part of her practice, something she fits around her own writing. Her translations tend to go to voices that English readers have had little chance to hear. Kodagina Gouramma, a Kodagu writer of the early twentieth century, left 21 short stories, and Bhasthi's version appeared as Fate's Game and Other Stories (Yoda Press, 2023). Earlier came her English translation of Kota Shivarama Karanth's novel The Same Village, The Same Tree (2022). She has also written a picture book for children, Champi and the Fig Tree, in both languages.

Her best-known work is Heart Lamp. Banu Mushtaq has published more than sixty stories in six collections, and Bhasthi chose twelve of them for the English volume, which And Other Stories brought out. It won an English PEN Translates award and then, in 2025, the International Booker Prize, shared with Mushtaq. It was the first short story collection and the first Kannada book to take the prize, and Bhasthi became the first Indian translator to win it.

Start with Heart Lamp. The stories centre on the daily lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India, and the Booker jury singled out the dense texture of her English. If you want more, Fate's Game is the natural next step.