Mohed Altrad was born into a Bedouin tribe in Syria. After earning a PhD in computer science at the University of Montpellier and working for the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, he founded Groupe Altrad, a world leader in the concrete and scaffolding industry, and was named the 2015 EY World Entrepreneur of the Year. He has published three other novels in French, L'Hypothèse de Dieu, La Promesse d'Annah, and the forthcoming La Reconstruction from Actes Sud.
Praise for Badawi: "Mohed Altrad's debut novel Badawi begins in the
Cold War-era Middle East, where the Bedouin tradition of a nomadic
life struggles against modernity . . . In this tale of a boy caught
between worlds, Altrad brings a sparse, lyrical quality to his
prose that at times verges on the poetic . . . With its focus on
the themes of abandonment, loss, success, and redemption among
Syrians at home and abroad, the novel sheds light on the refugee
crisis that has dominated headlines over the past two years . . .
Necessary."--Los Angeles Review of Books Badawi is less a
celebration of rags-to-riches success than a story about the pain
of being caught between two worlds.--Forbes "Poetically depicts a
Bedouin boy's extended coming of age and the uneasy navigation of
his transition from provincial Syria to the West."--Publishers
Weekly "With precision, beauty, and fierceness, Mohed Altrad tells
the story of a young Bedouin setting off to conquer life . . . A
fine book . . . From the beginning, one notes the fresh style,
which gives illumination to this poor boy's fate . . . A subtle
tension takes hold in these pages, a pregnant atmosphere . . . And
so it is that we're taken in by the story of Maïouf, launched along
his amazing trajectory."--La Marseillaise (France) "French
literature has been enriched by its first Bedouin
writer."--Entreprendre (France) "A book built on elusive sands and
quiet suffering, filled with the flavors of the Middle East and
modesty that masks emotion, like heavy damask . . . A good
novel."--Midi Libre (France) "Accessible to all."--Le Monde
(France) "This debut novel, a story of learning, written with
simplicity and modesty, rings incredibly true: indeed it seems
imbued with the experience both rich and painful of Mohed Altrad, a
Syrian who has been settled in France for a long time, of living in
exile."--Notes Bibliographiques (France)
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