A young man backpacking in Southeast Asia meets a French couple, and together they follow a dead man's map to "the beach," a fabled island unspoiled by the tourist trade. Haunted by increasingly violent dreams about the dead man, he finds that, once there, the idyllic paradise slowly begins to shatter, giving way to escalating horror and depravity. This novel, which follows in the tradition of LORD OF THE FLIES, was a huge success in England upon its publication, establishing Garland as an "author to watch."