Heart lamp Selected stories

Mushtaq makes her English-language debut with this virtuosic collection, shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, about the public and private lives of women in southern India's Islamic communities. In "A Taste of Heaven," a wryly humorous tale of three children trying to comfort their rapidly declining great-aunt, the children tell her she's already in heaven and that the Pepsi she's drinking is aab-e-kausar, the water of a river in Paradise. Elsewhere, Mushtaq lands gut-wrenching social critiques, as in the title story, about a mother who resolves to self-immolate after her family refuses to support her choice to leave her unfaithful husband. In "The Shroud," a wealthy housewife agrees to bring her cleaning woman a funeral shroud from Saudi Arabia, forgets to do it, and becomes inconsolable with guilt when the woman dies. In "Black Cobras," a woman left destitute after her husband leaves her learns her rights under Sharia from the educated woman she does menial labor for, then tries to petition the local mosque for help. The stories are united by a keen eye for the interplay between their characters' social circumstances and inner lives, as religious authority and economic class exert their influence. It's an excellent introduction to an author of rare talent. (Apr.)

Sterling collection of short stories by South Indian writer Mushtaq. The first book of short stories to win the International Booker Prize, Mushtaq's collection is also the first prizewinner to have been translated from Kannada, an Indian language whose flavor comes through in Bhasthi's fluent translation, as when, in the first story, a newlywed woman ponders how to introduce her husband: "If I use the term yajamana and call him owner, then I will have to be a servant, as if I am an animal or a dog." An attorney, activist, and sometime journalist, Mushtaq often writes of Muslim women in unhappy relationships. In one story, a woman returns home, facing shame for leaving an unfaithful husband forced on her in an arranged marriage, and chides her relatives for their role in her unhappiness: "I begged you not to make me stop studying. None of you listened to me. Many of my classmates aren't even married, and yet I have become an old woman." With five children to support, she desperately seeks a way out, with surprising consequences. In another story, a woman, maddened by a houseful of boisterous children on summer vacation, decides that the only way to get some peace and quiet is to enforce bedrest on the older boys--and that means enrolling them in a mass circumcision that is euphemistically billed as a celebration for the Muslim prophet Ibrahim, "a collective exercise in which children look forward to an event but end up screaming loudly together." Mushtaq's characters are frequently at odds, and several have strange foibles, as with a religious teacher who becomes addicted to gobi manchuri, a cauliflower dish, which leads to some decidedly unsaintly behavior. The book is not without its flashes of sharp-edged, ironic humor, as when a woman seemingly caught in the throes of dementia is offered a Pepsi as "the drink of heaven," but more often Mushtaq writes in near-documentary style of lives lived in constant struggle. A memorable introduction to a gifted writer from whom we should hope to hear more. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.