[7] According to media, Benyamin became an "overnight sensation" with the publication of this "hard-hitting story" and is currently one of the top sellers in Malayalam.

Najeeb's dream was to work in the Arab Gulf states and earn enough money to send back home.

Penguin Books India's introduction describes the novel as "the strange and bitter comedy of Najeeb's life in the desert" and "a universal tale of loneliness and alienation".

However, at the King Khalid International Airport, Riyadh he is clueless as what to do next and is taken away by an Arab man who he believes to be his work sponsor.

The work sponsor takes him to a cattle farm in the middle of a desert, confirming Najeeb's worst nightmare.

Najeeb is then used as a shepherd and is assigned to tend goats, sheep and camels for almost 3+1⁄2 years in the remote deserts of Saudi Arabia.

He stops absconding when he finds the skeleton of the previous shepherd buried in the sand, who he thought had escaped.

Finally one night with the help of Ibrahim Khadiri, a Somali worker in the neighboring farm, Najeeb Muhammed and his friend Hakeem escapes from the horrible life to freedom.

Initially devastated, Najeeb somehow manages to find his way to a nearby highway, where after a day of trying, a kind Arab stops for him and rides him to Al-Bathaa.

Once Najeeb started feeling better, he gets himself arrested by the civil police in order to get deported to India with Hameed, who he had met while being with Kunjikka.

The English translation of the novel for Penguin Books was carried out by Joseph Koyippally, a literature professor in the Central University of Kerala.