Finding that a swarm of mysterious hornets is responsible, he sets out to find where they came from.

One morning he wakes up to find his hives attacked and all their inhabitants destroyed, leaving him brokenhearted. The Ardent Swarm tells of Sidi, who lives a hermetic life, on the outskirts of a desolate north African village, and is a ‘bee whisperer’. He has written several novels of which The Ardent Swarm or L’Amas ardent was the first to be translated into English.

Manai is a Tunisian born author who currently lives in Paris and explores interactions between past and present and tradition and technology in his writings. Today’s pick is The Ardent Swarm (2017) by Tunisian author Yamen Manai and translated by Lara Vergnaud. I tried not to be greedy but did end up picking up three of the books offered which stood out to me for different reasons. In this brilliantly accessible modern-day parable, Yamen Manai uses a masterful blend of humor and drama to reveal what happens in a country shaken by revolutionary change after the world stops watching.Today’s post is about a relatively recent entrant on my shelves, acquired from the offerings on World Book Day earlier this year. To succeed in his quest, and find a glimmer of hope to protect all that he holds dear, Sidi will have to look further than he ever imagined. Heartbroken, he soon learns that a mysterious swarm of vicious hornets committed the mass murder-but where did they come from, and how can he stop them? If he is going to unravel this mystery and save his bees from annihilation, Sidi must venture out into the village and then brave the big city and beyond in search of answers.Īlong the way, he discovers a country and a people turned upside down by their new post–Arab Spring reality as Islamic fundamentalists seek to influence votes any way they can on the eve of the country’s first democratic elections. He wakes one morning to find that something has attacked one of his beehives, brutally killing every inhabitant. Sidi lives a hermetic life as a bee whisperer, tending to his beloved “girls” on the outskirts of the desolate North African village of Nawa. From an award-winning Tunisian author comes a stirring allegory about a country in the aftermath of revolution and the power of a single quest.

The Ardent Swarm by Yamen Manai