The plot is based around the events following the second failed coup d'etat against the late Hassan II of Morocco in August 1972.

The plot focuses on how prisoners who were kept in the extremely harsh conditions of Tazmamart survived, through religious devotion, imagination and communication.

Maureen Freely reviewed the book for The Guardian, and wrote that "it defies any expectations you might have built up from [knowing about Tazmamart].

It refuses the well-meaning but tired and ultimately dehumanising conventions of human rights horror journalism; it is not a political tract....

Freely wrote about the main character that "there is something Beckettian about his limited environment and studied hopelessness", and compared his literary voice to "the language of Islamic mysticism".