Benyamin (born 18 May 1971) is the pen name of Benny Daniel, an Indian novelist and short-story writer in Malayalam. He spent more than twenty years as a migrant worker in Bahrain, and his fiction is the fullest literary record of the lives of Keralites in the Gulf. His novel Aadujeevitham, translated as Goat Days, has sold in numbers rarely seen in Indian-language publishing and was made into a major film in 2024. He won the first JCB Prize for Literature in 2018.
Quick Facts
| Birth name | Benny Daniel |
| Pen name | Benyamin |
| Born | 18 May 1971, Kulanada, Pathanamthitta district, Kerala |
| Age | 55 |
| Occupation | Novelist, short-story writer |
| Language | Malayalam |
| Notable works | Aadujeevitham (Goat Days), Manjaveyil Maranangal (Yellow Lights of Death), Mullappoo Niramulla Pakalukal (Jasmine Days), Al Arabian Novel Factory |
| Awards | Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award (2009); JCB Prize for Literature (2018); Vayalar Award (2021) |
Early Life
Benyamin was born at Kulanada, near Pandalam in central Kerala, into a Syrian Christian family. He has said that he was not a writer or even much of a reader in his youth. In 1992, like hundreds of thousands of young men from the state, he left for the Gulf, and found work in Bahrain. Loneliness and long evenings turned him to books, and then to writing. He chose his pen name, a form of the biblical Benjamin, when he began to publish stories.
Writing
His first collection of stories appeared in 2000. Early novels such as Abeesagin and Akkapporinte Irupathu Nasrani Varshangal, a comic history of quarrels within the churches of central Kerala, drew on the world he had grown up in.
In Bahrain he met Najeeb, a man from Kerala who had gone to Saudi Arabia expecting a job as a shop assistant and had instead been taken from the airport to a remote farm in the desert. There he was kept for more than three years as a slave, herding goats, beaten, scarcely fed, without a wash or a word of his own language, until he escaped across the sands. Benyamin retold the story in the first person in a short, plain novel, Aadujeevitham (“Goat Life”), published in 2008.
It won the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award in 2009 and has gone through well over a hundred and fifty editions. It was put on school and university syllabuses, translated into English by Joseph Koyippally as Goat Days (2012), longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize and shortlisted for the DSC Prize. The book was reported to have been banned in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The director Blessy spent years on a film version; released in March 2024 with Prithviraj Sukumaran as Najeeb and music by A. R. Rahman, it was one of the most successful Malayalam films ever made.
Manjaveyil Maranangal (2011), translated as Yellow Lights of Death, is a literary thriller set on the island of Diego Garcia in which a writer named Benyamin receives the manuscript of a missing man. In 2014 he published two linked novels about the Arab Spring in an unnamed Gulf city: Al Arabian Novel Factory, told by a foreign journalist, and Mullappoo Niramulla Pakalukal, the secret memoir of a young Pakistani woman who works as a radio jockey. The second, translated by Shahnaz Habib as Jasmine Days, won the JCB Prize in 2018, the first time it was awarded, and the Crossword Book Award.
He gave up his job and came home in 2013 to write full time. He has since been publishing a cycle of novels about the land and families of his native region, the “Manthalir” books; one of them, Manthalirile 20 Communist Varshangal, won the Vayalar Award in 2021. Other works include Shareera Shasthram, Nishabda Sancharangal, about the generations of Malayali nurses who went abroad, and Tharakans Grandhavari.
Public Voice
He writes columns, speaks often at literary festivals and is an outspoken commentator on politics, migration and freedom of expression in Kerala.
Personal Life
He lives at Kulanada with his wife, Asha, and their two children.
Frequently Asked Questions
When and where was Benyamin born?
Benyamin was born on 18 May 1971 in Kulanada, Pathanamthitta district, Kerala and is 55 years old.
What is Benyamin’s occupation?
Occupation: Novelist, short-story writer.
What honours has Benyamin received?
Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award (2009); JCB Prize for Literature (2018); Vayalar Award (2021).
Featured image: Benyamin in July 2018. Photo by Mullookkaaran, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
