India, Nov. 7 -- Time twists, bends and folds back on itself, in Rakesfall. The protagonist, who goes by different names in different epochs, steps through her various lives at will; travels through worlds of the living and the dead, and through domains in which the two overlap so densely that courts must rule, in surreal judgements, on how they may best coexist.

It is a wild ride, in other words; one that sweeps through dystopias to end with some pale hope. All of which is why the Sri Lankan writer Vajra Chandrasekera has just won the Ursula K Le Guin Prize.

Rakesfall was also nominated for a Nebula, a prize that Chandrasekera's debut novel, The Saint of Bright Doors (about an assassination plot in a city tinged with the supernatural) ...