The Ardent Swarm by Yamen Manai: book review

The Ardent Swarm (2021) is set in Tunisia from 2019.

Sidi lives in the quiet village Nawa in Tunisia, tending to his hives of 30,000 bees. One morning, all of them have been murdered, ripped to pieces. All of them. And not a drop of honey was left. The villagers believe that this is a curse. They are all affected – no honey to sweeten their tea.

Times were changing. The country was on the verge of its first free and fair elections, from the city to the rural villages. ‘The villagers were completely discombobulated. Most of them hadn’t even chosen their spouses, and now they were meant to choose who would govern them.’ Now, city politicians were visiting the villagers, promising them electricity, free clothes, and even running water.

Sidi discovers his bee murderers: a mysterious squadron of vicious hornets. They knew the ‘barbarian art of war.’ Unlike bees that sting once, lose their stinger and die, hornets do not lose their stinger, so they ‘sting at will’ over and over again. But where was this aggression coming from? To find the answer, Sidi would need books, and they were in the city.

In the city library, Sidi learns about hornets: ‘A single hornet can kill forty bees per minute, thanks to its large jaws.’ Native bees were not equipped with natural defenses against the giant hornet. ‘Only Japanese bees, Apis mellifera japonica, have succeeded in developing an effective defense technique, called the ardent swarm.’ But his bees were not Japanese. What was Sidi going to do?

What two people do to help Sidi is remarkable, but dangerous. And dangerous for Sidi too.

This is a wonderful well-written provocative book, full of allegory, poignancy, tension, and humour.

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MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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