London writer and curator Ben Tufnell returns with an uncategorisable novel of noir, folk horror, ecological unease and psychological suspense
A world is edging towards collapse. Beyond the city’s concrete and glass lies another terrain entirely: dense woodland, mountains, a standing stone, a barrow and an ancient house that seems to belong to a much older order of things. For Nash, who has known little beyond the hard surfaces of urban life, survival in such a place is not instinctive. It must be learnt, and quickly.
In Paradise, the new novel by Ben Tufnell, a mysterious organisation offers Nash what appears to be a way forward. Recruited into its orbit, he believes his luck may finally have turned. Then a job goes badly wrong, and he is removed to an isolated location while others decide what is to become of him.
Paradise By Ben Tufnell
Courtesy of Influx Press
That place is Paradise, a decaying cottage buried deep in a winter forest. Nash is allowed to leave the house, but not the woods. The distinction soon begins to feel less like freedom than another form of captivity. The landscape around him is remote, hostile and difficult to read. As he tries to map the area and find a route out, the land seems to resist him, shifting in ways that unsettle both his sense of direction and his grasp on reality. What begins as a story of confinement becomes something stranger and more disquieting. Nash’s employers may not simply be watching over him. Their intentions appear increasingly opaque, and possibly far darker than he first imagined.
An unsettling novel of juxtapositions and surprises, Paradise moves between city and forest, bringing both to teeming, violent life. Tufnell creates landscapes that work upon us on the deepest level.
Aliya Whiteley, author of The Beauty and Skyward Inn
Tufnell’s Paradise is a taut and atmospheric eco-thriller, drawing together elements of noir, folk horror and nature writing to explore some of the most urgent anxieties of the present moment. It is a novel concerned with landscape, power, ecological breakdown and the fear of finding oneself in a world that can no longer be controlled.
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About Ben Tufnell
Ben Tufnell is a writer and curator based in London. His short stories have appeared in Conjunctions, Litro, Lunate, Nightjar Press, Storgy and Structo, among others, and were included in Best British Short Stories 2024 from Salt Publishing.
He has been longlisted or highly commended for the BBC National Short Story Award, the Sean O’Faolain Short Story Prize, The White Review Short Story Prize and the Disquiet Fiction Prize, and shortlisted for the Society of Authors’ ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award for short fiction. His debut novel, The North Shore, was published by Fleet, Little, Brown, in 2023.
©2026 Ben Tufnell
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