***LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION AND SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2020 EDGE HILL PRIZE*** A family prepares for Assessment; an au pair in the Caribbean wrestles with duty as a hurricane makes landfall; a game designer aches with bodily longing. Amidst it all, twins, heroines, mothers and rebels play out their lives under the strange grips of technology, governments, corporations and the capricious planet on which we all, in our different ways, just about manage to live. This Paradise is a rare and beautiful collection of stories about people fleeing towards places or times or situations they hope might be better – trying to outrun their nature, to deny the undeniable. Written with an arresting eye for detail, a rich sense of compassion and a darkly comic understanding of the human psyche, the stories in this volume propose a series of haphazard questions, not least of which is: where do we run to when there’s nowhere left to run? “No other writer of short fiction has such a firm finger on the unsteady pulse of the suppurating British body politic.” – Joanna Walsh, author of Words From The World’s End. “With these stories, Ruby Cowling shows a brilliantly instinctive understanding that a story can be anything, go anywhere, and say the things you were least expecting it to say. These are stories that will tip the ground out from beneath your feet.” – Jon McGregor, author of Reservoir 13.