Twenty-six-year-old Jimmy Brennan's life has taken a turn for the worse, and he's desperate to numb the pain. When his mother dies and his girlfriend betrays him with his oldest friend, it's the final straw; Jimmy leaves Australia behind him, bound for Bali.

But Jimmy's demons chase him. Sickened by the rapacious tourists which overrun the Indonesian holiday island, he escapes north up the archipelago, driven by a desire for solitude and possessed by a reckless, self-destructive urge.

When he's offered the opportunity to visit the forbidden island of North Sentinel, home of a forgotten tribe which has violently rejected outside contact for centuries, Jimmy takes it.

He finds his piece of paradise, but it's a decision that will have deadly consequences.