Badawi

July 25, 2016
Altrad’s autobiographical debut novel, first published in France in 2002, poetically depicts a Bedouin boy’s extended coming of age and the uneasy navigation of his transition from provincial Syria to the West. After the death of his mother, young Maïouf must skirt the commands of his caretaker grandmother to attend school, first in his unnamed village and then in the city of Raqqa, where he proves to be a standout student. When he’s offered a scholarship to attend college in France, it’s less the subject, petrochemistry, that convinces him, than the chance to escape an uncertain future and make good on his potential. Swearing to return for his youthful love, Fadia, he sets off for Paris and changes his name to the aspirational Qaher (“the victorious”). But as time passes, the newfound Qaher struggles to reconcile his ambitions with a past—and a promise—that seem increasingly further away. Altrad, a construction magnate who’s entered the Forbes billionaire list since the book’s original publication, sketches his narrator’s interior life with a sparseness that can dip into the programmatic but at its most elegant recalls Paulo Coelho. He reserves his more florid detours for the “velvet of the desert” and meditations on power and influence.

July 1, 2016
Born a Badawi (Bedouin) in Syria, Maiouf finds himself caught between two worlds whenagainst his grandmother's objectionshe goes to school, ultimately moving to the region's capital city to continue his education and receiving the highest score there on his baccalaureate exam. His life changes dramatically when this boy from the desert receives a grant to study in France, becoming, in the process, further alienated, torn now between two cultures, French and Syrian. Graduating, he takes a job as an engineer with an oil company in Abu Dhabi, a foreign worker, once again feeling like a stranger to everyone but Fadia, with whom he had fallen in love as a boy but is uncertain, now, how he feels about her and his childhood home in the desert. First published in France, Altrad's autobiographical novel is the hauntingly melancholy story of a gifted young man's attempt to find a home in a rootless world. Though set in the Middle East, the story has universal applications in this age of emigrants and immigrants.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)