Daumal died before the novel was completed, providing an uncanny one-way quality to the story, which ends abruptly in the middle of a sentence.

Father Sogol – "Logos" spelled backwards – is the leader of the expedition to climb the mysterious mountain, which is believed to unite Heaven and Earth.

Sogol invites the narrator to join the expedition, along with various other specialists, including scientists, artists, philosophers, and writers.

He explains that he inferred the existence of the massive mountain from the general balance of Earth's gravitational field despite the apparently uneven distribution of landmasses on its surface – determining that its geographical location is somewhere in the South Pacific.

The continent can only be perceived or accessed in any way from a precise location when rays of sunlight hit the earth at a certain angle.

Climbers are required to adhere to a complex system of rules and regulations involving professional guides, porters, and a network of camps, and are punished severely for causing any disturbance to the mountain's delicate ecology.

.Some of the paintings of the Spanish-Mexican painter Remedios Varo were used in the illustrations for the first edition of the novel, such as Embroidering the Earth's Mantle and The Ascension of Mount Analog.

The Australian artist Imants Tillers created his own version of Mount Analog without having knowledge of Varo's previous work.