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’Hypothése de Dieu, La Promesse d’Annah, and La Reconstruction from Actes Sud.
