International Booker Prize shortlist: From Banu Mushtaq’s ‘Heart Lamp’, translated by Deepa Bhasthi

Yusuf would get out of the house by seven o’clock without even having breakfast, and come home only for lunch. In the evenings, dinner was at his mother’s house, which was not far away. The front of Yusuf’s house had a large room. He blocked off the door to the rest of the building, knocked in a new entrance facing the street, designated some space as bathroom and some space as kitchen, and called it a home. The left side of the house was his wife Akhila’s; the right side was his mother Mehaboob Bi’s. Widowed at a young age, his mother had spat fire on anyone suggesting she remarry, had carried her only son Yusuf on her back, and raised him with a lot of love. There was no struggle she had not gone through; there was no job she had not done.

Yusuf had been forced to sell fruit from early on. Initially he harvested the papayas that had grown in the front yard, carved them creatively, each slice as thin as paper, and sold them. Thin slices of cucumber with salt and chilli powder sprinkled on top danced in the hands of customers. Each piece of cucumber would...

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