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, it's the final straw; he leaves Australia, bound for Bali. But Jimmy's demons chase him. Sickened by the filth and the rapacious tourists swarming the Indonesian holiday island, Jimmy escapes north up the archipelago, driven by a desire for solitude and possessed by a restless, 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 paradise, but it's a discovery that will have deadly consequences.