Badawi

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. (Sept.)