Paradise

by Ben Tufnell

A world on the brink of collapse. Dense woods, mountains, a standing stone, a barrow, and a very old house. But if you’ve only ever known concrete and glass, how do you live in a place like this?

Recruited by a mysterious organisation, Nash thinks things are finally going his way. But when a job goes badly wrong, he is taken to an isolated location to await a decision on his fate.

Paradise is a crumbling cottage deep in a forest; Nash is free to leave the house but must not leave the woods. It is winter, and this wild and remote place is unknowable and terrifying. He attempts to map his surroundings to find a way out, but they resist him, the land seemingly shifting and changing. Moreover, he begins to suspect that his employers’ intentions may be much darker than anticipated.

Forming an unlikely friendship, Nash finally begins to understand the consoling power of the place that has become his home. Brigid is sure of herself and at home in the natural world, while he is urban, lost. But she longs for his world, and he longs for hers.

Now the wheel of the year is turning. As winter gives way to spring Nash’s fate has been decided, and they are coming to deliver their verdict…

Paradise is the brilliant new novel from Ben Tufnell, an uncategorizable Kafkaesque eco-thriller combining elements of noir, folk horror and nature writing, addressing the most urgent of contemporary issues.

ebook

Expected publication March 1, 2026

Reviews

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is, in fact, time to usher in the post-Anthropocene!
'What does that mean?'
'A natural paradise. There are some optimists - deluded people - who believe it may be possible for Homo sapiens to somehow reach a more enlightened state of being, to finally work towards achieving some kind of balance with nature and to live on in harmony with the planet. But the people we work with believe such a thing is simply impossible.  No, Homo sapiens is a mistake, a category error. The only way forward is to take it out of the equation. Let the garden recover. Let it flourish'

 
The writer and art-curator’s debut “North Shore” (2023) was about liminality and metamorphosis which itself spreads across the boundaries between fact, fiction, and outright fantasy and which transforms from what is initially a gothic style mystery to musings in art – an excellent book made even more special for me by its evocative setting in a not-quite Norfolk.
 
This his second novel opens in Winter with the close third party protagonist Nash being picked up by his handlers after a botched operation at a hotel and taken some way away from the City in which he operates (I assume London) to Paradise, a dilapidated cottage deep in a dark, gloomy wood set in a remote hillside in what he later finds out are the Welsh borders – and instructed to wait there (with heavy threats as to what will happen if he strays further than the woods) while the operation and his role in its failure is evaluated.
 
Flashback sections fill in Nash’s journey – deciding against a Maths degree at University (a terrible decision I have to say) he instead drifts into a series of casual, manual labour jobs before an incident in a pub (where he instinctively and calmly fights off an unprovoked attack from a local nutjob) draws his attention to the organisation who ask him to work – cash in hand and with accomodation provided.
 
At first Nash thinks his luck has changed – even if the work seems mysterious: picking up items, passing on messages, ferrying people around – and his superiors menacing.  But over time the work becomes darker – threats, physical violence, references to past jobs disposing of bodies – and his insistence on understanding more about the organisation makes him realise that what he had thought was possible a branch of the intelligence agencies seems instead related to an organisation seeming to want to usher in (both for profit and philosophical motives) the end of the Western Democracy/Capitalist era and even the end of the Anthropocene era.
 
Meanwhile in the woods he is supplied by a local lady in the employ of the organisation – horseriding Mary Owen – but then forms a secret friendship with her daughter Brigid: Brigid approaching college age and fascinated with his tales of the City at the same time as he finds himself increasingly drawn for the first time to the natural world in which Bridgid has always lived.
 
And all of this plays out against what he knows will be the inevitable reckoning from the organisation – a verdict against him that the longer time goes on he becomes convinced will be negative and brutally rendered.
 
Hugely atmospheric – this is an impressive part-Kafkaesque, part-Gothic literary eco-noir thriller, which manages to combine an immersive reading experience with an oblique exploration of late capitalism and climate change.
 
Recommended.