Heruy's only novel, the first written and published since Afawarq Gabra Iyasus's "Lebb Wallad Tarik", is "Addis Aläm" ("The New World"), published in 1932. As Jack Fellman explains, "The plot of the 80-page novel is basically simple, the narrative proceeds quickly and vividly with few complications, and the language is clear and concise. No foreign words are used." It recounts the life of one Awwaqa, who is born in Tegulet, which Heruy describes as a remote and backward village. He desires to be educated and succeeds in going to France by taking service with a visiting Frenchman. While in Paris Awwaqa studies languages and sciences, but after eight years feels homesick and returns to Tagulat. Once he returns, however he finds his family and friends cannot tolerate his new "revolutionary" foreign ideas. The novel continues expands the theme of the conflict between Awwaqa's modern European ideas and Ethiopia's more traditional ones. "Addis Alam" ends on an optimistic note, "perhaps as befitting a pioneering work" writes Fellman, with a compromise solution proposed by the Ethiopian Church meets and recognizes the benefits of the western world and the need to change at least some aspects of Ethiopia's traditional ways.