Picking Up the Pieces in a Postapocalyptic World with Vajra Chandrasekera

Vajra Chandrasekera is a novelist based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. His new novel, Rakesfall, follows two characters as they're reincarnated across histories and worlds from the mythic past to modern Sri Lanka to the far future Earth through endless epicycles of love, violence, and betrayal. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Chandrasekera to discuss the weaponization of religious myths in Sri Lankan Buddhism, why he describes himself as an “unbuddhist,” how rituals anchor and retell history, and the role of haunting and possession in his work.