A Booker is life-changing. Three past winners reveal how

In her 2025 memoir, Mother Mary Comes to Me, Arundhati Roy describes the night of October 16, 1997, when The God of Small Things became the first Indian novel to win a Booker: “It was thrilling to win the Booker Prize. But the weeks of hysteria around the shortlisted authors, the bets that were being laid on us by bookies, the grand banquet at which only one of us would be announced as the winner, made me feel more like a horse than a writer.”

A pinnacle of literary achievement, the Booker Prize celebrates literature that has made a difference—be it through sheer literary merit, by exploring the socio-cultural landscape of the time, or by simply illuminating the core of the human experience. But what follows the big win? How does the author, who will no longer be called anything but “the Booker prize-winning novelist”, take in all the attention? What do they feel? Does the prize open new doors, encourage them to write more, or make it harder to get back to the desk? Some writers call it revitalising, others talk about the creative block that builds when you have the pressure of replicating the same success. But they all agree: winning the Booker is life-changing.

This year at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival (UWRF), which took place in October, among lush rice terraces and dense rainforests, I met Banu Mushtaq and Deepa Bhasthi—author and translator, respectively, of Heart Lamp, which won them the 2025 International Booker Prize—to take forward my enquiries.

On May 20, when the duo became global names, the night wasn’t without its drama. Banu had lost her luggage and was on a hunt for an outfit for the ceremony. A last-minute sari brought in from Bahrain came to the rescue. For Bhasthi, the bizarreness of the night was what stood out the most. After the initial wave of congratulations and flashes, fellow translator Anton Hur approached her and said, “You know, you’re the first translator of colour—and the first Indian translator—to win this award.” She was stunned. “That can’t be right,” she recalls telling Hur at the ceremony at London’s Tate Modern. “It’s too big a responsibility to take on.”

In the aftermath of the win, their life is filled with press calls, festival invitations, endless events and interviews, and a lot of travel. 

Jenny Erpenbeck, winner of the 2024 International Booker Prize for Kairos, who was also at UWRF this year, remembers being intensely anxious. So much so that when the title of her book was announced she couldn’t recognise it for a moment. What followed was a daze of cameras, photos, and press calls—the kind of noise that leaves little room for real feeling: “It all happened so fast,” Erpenbeck tells me, “I could only process it hours later when I came back to my hotel room. I remember taking a picture of the hotel building when it all hit me.”

Like her, many authors have described the difficulties they face getting back to the desk. In the year and half since her win, Erpenbeck has barely been able to write. With her next work far more ambitious than Kairos, she struggles to find the time even for research. Now, as her schedule begins to ease, she is gearing up to tackle the bulk of the first draft.

But despite such busy schedules, you cannot stop authors from writing. In the seven months since their win, both Mushtaq and Bhasthi have carved out time—on long flights or late nights in a hotel room—to write. “Writing is my lifeline,” Mushtaq shares, “So I cannot keep away from it.” Bhasthi, who is a writer first, has also been finding time to chip away at her manuscript in between events and interviews, treating the work like a necessary, calming ritual.

Winning the Booker means the entire literary world suddenly directs its gaze towards you. Every move is watched, every word is analysed. “[The Booker] changed everything. Even though some communists said that it was all an imperialist plot, people were proud and happy that an Indian author had won a big international award. But to celebrate me wholeheartedly, The God of Small Things needed to be depoliticized. It began to be spoken of as a book about children, praised for its lyrical language and stripped of its politics. Stripped of its reference to caste,” writes Roy of her encounters with fame.

The acclaim brings with it an almost breathless and invasive curiosity about what you create next. But that kind of spotlight can easily work against a writer, most of whom are lone wolves who like to disappear into their minds for long, unbroken stretches and come back only when something finally feels right.

When asked about writing under this new limelight, Mushtaq too admits that she has grown a bit more cautious. While her work is revolutionary in its regional and cultural context, she feels it will take some time for her to relax in this new attention before she feels freer to take more artistic risks.

For Bhasthi, the spotlight and buzz around her name serves as a double-edged sword. She knows more people are looking forward to her next move, so she feels the pull between being cautious and making her point while the world is watching. “I am good at blocking that limelight, thanks to my very separate and private life,” says Bhasthi, “So, when I sit down to write, the pressure of the literary circles is rarely on my mind.”

What they seem to echo is that despite the initial blocks and challenges to their creativity, winning the Booker prize, in the long-run, has opened up their artistic potential: “Now that I have won the prize, I am set financially for a good period of time,” says Erpenbeck, whose book saw a staggering increase of 442 per cent after her win.

The fame might signal attention and restraints, but it might also usher in greater freedom. As Erpenbeck elaborates, “No matter how deeply committed you are to your craft, you still need to pay the bills, so most writers have to focus on the commercial aspects of being published. But once you win the prize, you start to sell more, the prize money also propels you further, and suddenly you don’t have to worry so much. You can take more risks. You can write about what truly matters to you.”