After studying philosophy and Arabic in Aix-en-Provence and Paris, he conducted four years of fieldwork in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He moved to the United States in 2008 and now lives between New York and Abu Dhabi. He is the author of The Saudi Enigma: A History (London: ZedBook, 2005), L’Arabie, des routes de l’encens a l’ère du pétrole (Paris: Gallimard, 2010), and Joyriding in Riyadh: Oil, Urbanism, and Road Revolt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).