Book Review: Goat Days / Benyamin

In 2020, after a break of nearly 15 years, I got back into reading fiction with Goat Days. What follows are my thoughts on the novel by the writer Benyamin; this is not a comprehensive review of the book.

The novel is originally written in Malayalam as Aadujeevitham; I read the English translation by Joseph Koyippaly. It’s about migration — a young man chasing his dream of a better life by going to the Gulf, and his experiences in a strange, foreign land across the ocean, away from home. It reads as a cautionary tale, a warning to those who yearn for that dream. It’s suggested that the story is true, and given what we know about the exploitation of foreign labour in the Middle East, it probably is. Though I wonder if the suggestion is a writing ‘tool’, and the protagonist is possibly a composite creation.

The narrative is mostly linear, with the protagonist reminiscing about his experiences in a chronological sequence. The impact of the story is greater because of the suggestion that it is a ‘true’ story; however, had the book been explicitly stated to be ‘fiction’, I would have found it to be performative, like exploitation porn. So it seems to stand precariously on edge — a true narration of horrendous events, of the brutality of man over man on one side, or a voyeuristic exploration of suffering on the other. As for the writing, there is nothing particularly exciting about it; this is more or less a straight forward narration of events; it’s not thought provoking and it doesn’t stay with you for long after you finish reading it. I wonder if that is a result of something being lost in translation but I doubt it.