Beneath the Diamond Sky - Christopher Wakling

LORD OF THE FLIES, THE MAGUS and THE BEACH lurk at the roots of this novel, but Chris Wakling gives us something terrifyingly timely and new. A group of backpackers are taken hostage by a band of terrorists in Kashmir. They don't know why and they don't know for how long. Their deprivation, squalor, hunger, madness are brilliantly drawn. And the claustrophobia of their personal and separate battles make for a taut, tense, nightmare as the actual fibre of each person (upbringing, past, relationships) begins to crack through and enslave each one individually.