The Suffering

David Sodergren is a contemporary extreme horror author based in Scotland who has developed quite a loyal following among modern horror fiction readers. The Suffering is his 13th novel, published in 2026.

The story takes place in a remote Catholic convent in the Italian Alps around 1890 or so. The nuns live in solitude and prayer under the supervision of a strict Mother Superior. A couple of times per year, a doctor from the nearby village travels up the mountain to provide the nuns with basic medical care.

On this trip, the doctor finds a young woman in the snow near the convent and brings her inside to be nursed back to health. There’s a young sister named Ursula with a genuine interest in nursing, so she takes ownership of the amnesiac girl’s well-being.

There are some salacious chapters where the reader is treated to the secret lives of cloistered 19th-century nuns, including a hidden lesbian couple and a sister who has learned to love the Joy of Sex with a visiting doctor.

It doesn’t take long for the horror to begin in the form of a black fungal parasite infecting the nuns. The fast-spreading ailment reminded me of a classic British horror novel called The Fungus by Harry Adam Knight or The Ruins by Scott Smith. This gives way to a lot of vividly described gross-out body horror, so you may not want to read this one while eating.

The infection coincides with a blizzard, snowing the doctor in with the rapidly decaying situation involving the infected nuns. The mysterious ailment also drives the ladies completely mad and impossibly horny, allowing the author to spread his literary wings with scenes of irrational Catholic Girls Gone Wild dressed as penguins behaving like dogs in heat.

How does all this tie into the lost girl in the woods that Sister Ursula is nursing to health? Can the doctor and his secret nun lover survive this convent of carnage? What we have here is a very graphic reimagining of zombie fiction tropes. As a closed-space survival adventure story, it really worked. At no point was it actually scary, but there are plenty of stomach-turning gore set-pieces, if that’s your jam.

Whether this is your thing or not, it’s undeniable that Sodergren is a solid author who has mastered easy-to-read pulpy prose and a good instinct for propulsive plotting. The Suffering certainly isn’t going to be for everyone, but I had fun with it. 

Get the book HERE.