Banu Mushtaq is a writer, activist and lawyer from Karnataka, India. Mushtaq began writing within the progressive protest literary circles in southwestern India in the 1970s and 80s. Critical of the caste system, the Bandaya Sahitya movement gave rise to influential Dalit and Muslim writers, of whom Mushtaq was one of the few women. She is the author of six short story collections,a novel, an essay collection and a poetry collection. She writes in Kannada and has won the Karnataka Sahitya Academy and Daana Chintamani Attimabbe awards.

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• Heart Lamp: Selected Stories (2024). Translated by Deepa Bhasthi, 2025)