One thing I found especially interesting while reading Banu Mushtaq’s Heart Lamp is the use of inner voice and the representation of a character’s thoughts. This is sometimes described as a distinctly modern literary device, but the history is much older.
An ancient technique
Already in Luke 12:17, the narrator gives us access to a character’s private reasoning:
“He reasoned with himself, saying, ‘What shall I do?’”
The Greek is διελογίζετο ἐν ἑαυτῷ λέγων — literally, “he was reasoning within himself, saying…”. The rich man then continues his thought as direct speech. Luke therefore does not merely tell us that he was worried or uncertain; he lets us hear his inner deliberation.
Shakespeare
Shakespeare develops the same basic technique into one of the great instruments of drama. Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be” is an extended self-questioning speech. The audience hears a character thinking through a problem that is not being communicated to another person.
The difference is mainly one of scale and complexity: Luke gives us a compact, purposeful inner dialogue, while Shakespeare can turn such self-address into an extended philosophical meditation.
Banu Mushtaq’s Heart Lamp
In Heart Lamp, this older technique becomes much more psychologically intimate. Mushtaq’s stories frequently move close to the consciousness of her characters, sometimes shifting perspectives and allowing memories, fears, judgments, and desires to emerge almost directly from within the character’s experience.
In some stories, the effect is close to an interior monologue; elsewhere, the narrator remains more visible. What feels modern is therefore not the existence of inner speech itself, but the degree of psychological immediacy and the way the boundary between narrator and character can become porous.
A useful way to think about the tradition
Rather than saying that the inner monologue was invented by modern literature, I would see a longer development:
- Luke: private reasoning presented as direct inner speech.
- Shakespeare: private thought becomes a major dramatic form.
- Modern literature: thought can become fragmented, associative, and stream-of-consciousness.
- Banu Mushtaq: inner perspective becomes a powerful way of conveying the social and emotional lives of women and other characters whose voices are often constrained or unheard.
So Heart Lamp can be read as part of a very old literary tradition rather than as an example of a technique that suddenly appeared in modern literature. What changes over time is not the possibility of representing inner life, but how closely literature allows us to inhabit it.