Who among the following had won the International Booker Prize in 2025 ? 1. Banu Mushtaq 2. Deepa Bhasthi 3. Sanjay Chauhan Select the correct answer from the code given below :
- (a)1 and 2
- (b)2 and 3
- (c)Only 3
- (d)Only 1
Correct — A, 1 and 2 (Banu Mushtaq and Deepa Bhasthi). The International Booker Prize 2025 went to 'Heart Lamp: Selected Stories' by the Kannada writer Banu Mushtaq, translated into English by Deepa Bhasthi. The decisive point is a rule of the prize itself: the International Booker is awarded jointly to the author and the translator, and the £50,000 prize money is split equally between them, £25,000 each. Both names in the list are therefore winners, which is exactly why the code '1 and 2' is right and 'Only 1' is not. 'Heart Lamp' was the first Kannada-language work and the first short-story collection to take the prize, and Deepa Bhasthi became the first Indian translator to win it. Sanjay Chauhan, item 3, has no connection with the 2025 International Booker.
- (b)2 and 3 — It rightly counts the translator, Deepa Bhasthi, but drops the author whose book actually won, Banu Mushtaq, and substitutes a name unconnected with the prize. A code option must be right on every item it names.
- (c)Only 3 — No writer or translator of this name is associated with the 2025 International Booker Prize; the award that year was made to 'Heart Lamp' and its two credited winners.
- (d)Only 1 — This is the near-miss the question is built around, and probably the most-marked wrong option. Banu Mushtaq is genuinely a winner — but the International Booker is not an author-only prize. The translator shares it equally by the terms of the award, so an answer that leaves out Deepa Bhasthi is incomplete.
The International Booker Prize, in its present form since 2016, is awarded every year for a single work of long-form fiction or a short-story collection translated into English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. Its defining feature is that the author and the translator win together and split the £50,000 equally — the prize was restructured deliberately to give translation the same standing as original writing. Before 2016 it was the Man Booker International Prize, given once every two years to a living author of any nationality for a whole body of work available in English. It is a different award from the Booker Prize proper, which is for fiction originally written in English.
This item has two locks and you need both keys. The first is the current-affairs fact — who won in 2025 (the exam was held on 12 October 2025, about five months after the May 2025 announcement). The second is the structural fact — that the International Booker is shared with the translator. A candidate who has only the news headline 'Banu Mushtaq wins the Booker' will read the list, see one name they recognise, and settle for 'Only 1'. The presence of the translator as a separate numbered item is the examiner signalling that the sharing rule is what is really being tested.
- International Booker Prize 2025: 'Heart Lamp: Selected Stories' by Banu Mushtaq, translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi
- The prize money of £50,000 is divided equally between author and translator (£25,000 each)
- 'Heart Lamp' was the first Kannada-language work and the first short-story collection to win the International Booker
- Deepa Bhasthi was the first Indian translator to win the prize
- Geetanjali Shree's 'Tomb of Sand' (Hindi, translated by Daisy Rockwell) won in 2022 — the first novel in an Indian language to win the International Booker
- Keep the two prizes apart: the Booker Prize is for fiction written in English; the International Booker is for fiction translated into English
- Marking 'Only 1' — forgetting that the International Booker is shared equally with the translator
- Treating the Booker Prize and the International Booker Prize as the same award
- Being pulled by an unrelated name that merely sounds like it belongs to the same news cycle
UPPSC asks the current-year winner by name, and increasingly wraps it in a numbered-list code so that the author-plus-translator rule, not just the headline, decides the answer. UPSC prefers the rules and history of the prize — who is eligible, for which book an author won, how the award changed over time.
For which one of the following books did Kiran Desai win the Man Booker Prize 2006?
- (a) The Secret River
- (b) In the Country of Men
- (c) The Inheritance of Loss
- (d) Mother's Milk
Answer(c) The Inheritance of Loss
Same concept — matching a Booker-winning book to the writer who won it in a given year. Kiran Desai's 2006 win is the classic Indian instance of the prize for fiction written in English, which is the award Banu Mushtaq's translated collection must be distinguished from.
Consider the following statements: 1. The Man Booker Prize is awarded to citizens of any of the countries of the British Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. 2. A leading London-based software company underwrites the Man Booker Prize presently. 3. The winner of the Man Booker Prize in the year 2004 is a South Asian. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
- (a) 1 only
- (b) 1 and 3
- (c) 2 and 3
- (d) 1, 2 and 3
Answer(a) 1 only
Tests the rules of the Booker rather than a winner's name — exactly the layer that decides the 2025 UPPSC question, where knowing that the International Booker is shared with the translator is what rules out 'Only 1'.
The author of the Booker Prize Winner 2019 book "Girl, Women, Other" is
- (a) Margaret Atwood
- (b) Elif Shafak
- (c) Salman Rushdie
- (d) Bernadine Evaristo
Answer(d) Bernadine Evaristo
The same commission asking the same thing six years earlier — the current-year Booker winner, with the other big names of that season planted as distractors. It shows how reliably UPPSC picks up the Booker announcement of the year preceding the exam.
- practice — not a real PYQ
'Heart Lamp', which won the International Booker Prize 2025, was originally written in which language?
- (a)Malayalam
- (b)Kannada
- (c)Marathi
- (d)Bengali
Answer(b) Kannada — it is a collection of short stories by Banu Mushtaq, translated into English by Deepa Bhasthi.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following statements about the International Booker Prize (in its present form) is correct?
- (a)It is awarded only to novels originally written in English
- (b)The prize money is shared equally between the author and the translator
- (c)It is given once every two years for an author's entire body of work
- (d)It is open only to writers from Commonwealth countries
Answer(b) The prize money is shared equally between the author and the translator — option (c) describes the pre-2016 Man Booker International Prize, and option (a) describes the Booker Prize.