Rakesfall: Winner of the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction!

Some stories take more than one lifetime to tell. There are wrongs that echo through the ages, friendships that outpace the claws of death, loves that leave their mark on civilization, and promises that nothing can break. This is one such story.

Annelid and Leveret met as children in the middle of the Sri Lankan civil war. They found each other in a torn-up nation, peering through propaganda to grasp a deeper truth. And in a demon-haunted wood, another act of violence linked them and propelled their souls on a journey throughout the ages. No world can hold them, no life can bind them, and they'll never leave each other behind.

About the Author :
Vajra Chandrasekera is from Colombo, Sri Lanka. He has published over fifty short stories in magazines and anthologies including Analog, Black Static, and Clarkesworld, among others, and his short fiction has been nominated for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. He is also the author of The Saint of Bright Doors.

Review :
“A work of boundless creativity. Every mind-expanding chapter is another twist of the kaleidoscope. This is a fearless, hallucinatory novel that takes colonial (and all) power structures on with art and style.” —Ray Nayler, Locus Award-winning author of The Mountain in the Sea “Chandrasekera’s characters’ journey through fantastical worlds across millennia is reminiscent of This Is How You Lose the Time War . . . Recommended for fans of ambitious speculative fiction that tackles systems of oppression in fresh ways.” —Library Journal, starred review “Luminous, wrenching, intense — Rakesfall left me breathless... If this is not considered a work of genius, we have lost the meaning of the word.” —Premee Mohamed, Ursula K. Le Guin Prize-nominated author of The Siege of Burning Grass “Rakesfall is a story that aims to give its reader the impossible sensation of falling through worlds and lives in a never-ending cycle of reincarnation tied to a cosmic war, and is every bit as epic, challenging, and discombobulating as that sounds. There’s nothing quite like a Vajra Chandrasekera novel.” —Indrapramit Das, Locus Award-nominated author of The Last Dragoners of Bowbazar “[A] rich and sweeping epic.” —Publishers Weekly “A fabulous epic sci-fi.” —Book Riot “Cements Chandrasekera as one of the genre’s most important, most vital voices.” —Locus “Rakesfall does what the best speculative fiction stories do: shine a light on injustice and ask questions about how we can change.” —Strange Horizons “Rich, moving, powerful.” —Reactor