INFLUX PRESS – serie

Set in a near-future fraught with ecological collapse, Christine Lai's mesmerising and prismatic debut novel Landscapes is a brilliant exploration of memory, empathy, preservation, and art as an instrument for recollection and renewal.In the English countryside-decimated by heat and drought-Penelope archives what remains of an estate's once notable collection. As she catalogues the library's contents, she keeps a diary of her final months in the dilapidated country house that has been her home for two decades and a refuge for those who have been displaced by disasters. Out of necessity, Penelope and her partner, Aidan, have sold the house and its scheduled demolition marks the pressing deadline for completing the archive. But with it also comes the impending return of Aidan's brother, Julian, at whose hands Penelope suffered during a brief but violent relationship twenty-two years before. As Julian's visit looms, Penelope finds herself unable to suppress the past, clinging to art as a means of understanding, of survival, and of reckoning.Recalling the works of Rachel Cusk and Kazuo Ishiguro, Landscapes is an elegiac and spellbinding blend of narrative, essay, and diary that reinvents the country-house novel for our age of catastrophe, announcing the arrival of an extraordinarily gifted new writer.

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.