SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 23 September 2025, Shift 1 · General Awareness · Question 11 of 100

We transcribed this text from the pictures on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; the answer is the key SSC colour-marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 13 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. From 2025 the candidate response sheet prints every question and option as a picture, so the text here is transcribed from those pictures for this shift and checked against them independently; where the layout carries meaning, the picture is shown as well. Each answer is the key SSC colour-marked on that sheet. SSC released a tentative key for challenge and later its final one, both only to candidates behind a login, and the sheet does not say which of the two it carries. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

In which language was Heart Lamp originally written?

(a)Tamil
(b)Kannada
(c)Hindi
(d)Malayalam

Answer

Why

Correct — B. Heart Lamp is a collection of 12 short stories by Banu Mushtaq, written in Kannada between 1990 and 2023 and translated into English by Deepa Bhasthi.

It won the International Booker Prize 2025, the first Kannada work and the first short-story collection to do so → option (b).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Tamil — Tamil is not the source language. Banu Mushtaq writes in Kannada, the language of Karnataka, and Heart Lamp was translated from it.
(c)
Hindi — Hindi is wrong here, though a Hindi novel has won this prize: Geetanjali Shree's Tomb of Sand, in 2022.
(d)
Malayalam — Malayalam is the language of Kerala. Heart Lamp's stories were written in Kannada and translated into English by Deepa Bhasthi.

Concept

The International Booker Prize honours a single work of fiction translated into English, and the author and translator share the award. That is why the 2025 prize went to Banu Mushtaq and Deepa Bhasthi together.

Mushtaq's stories centre on the lives of Muslim women in southern India, and they were written over three decades.

Key facts

Heart Lamp: 12 short stories by Banu Mushtaq, written in Kannada, translated by Deepa Bhasthi.
It won the International Booker Prize 2025, announced on 20 May 2025.
It is the first Kannada work and the first short-story collection to win the prize.
Geetanjali Shree's Tomb of Sand, translated from Hindi, won the prize in 2022.

Study next

The International Booker Prize and the Booker Prize: how the two differIndian winners and shortlisted writers of the International Booker

Common traps

Guessing Tamil or Malayalam as 'the South Indian language' — Heart Lamp was written in Kannada.
Crediting the author alone — the International Booker is shared with the translator.

Here the book is asked through its language. The prize itself is asked at 19 Sep 2025, 12:30, GA Q.17 (keyed: Banu Mushtaq & Deepa Bhasthi).

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Topic: Culture — all 246 SSC CGL questions on it, every solved shift.