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The Ardent Swarm

By: Yamen Manai, Lara Vergnaud - translator
Narrated by: Youssif Kamal
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Summary

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.

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. He wakes one morning to find that something has attacked one of his beehives, brutally killing every inhabitant. 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.

Along 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. 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.

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.

©2017 Yamen Manai. Translation © 2021 by Lara Vergnaud. Excerpt from “Anger” in “Selections from the Bestiary of Leonardo Da Vinci,” trans. Oliver Evans, Vol. 64, No. 254, of the Journal of American Folklore, is used with permission from the American Folklore Society (www.afsnet.org). (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
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A beautifully crafted story, excellently narrated

The use of bees to highlight the socioeconomic and ecological changes in Tunisia is pure genius, each charater is well rounded and their role with this allegorical work is precisely what makes the story so enjoyable.
Yhe narrator is fabulous.

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brilliant work

The writer made the life and culture of bees really interesting . it is the second book I have read with a story around bees and its an amazing read

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Beautiful story

I really loved this story, I started and stopped a few times at the beginning but when I got into it I was hooked. Politics, religion, corruption, humanity and bees. There is so much going on in this book and the story just intertwines beautifully.

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A joy to read with beekeeping an unexpected bonus.


It was short but such a lovely read (listen).
Although it dealt with a revolution and there were deaths, both apian and human, the story was uplifting and gave a glimpse of two cultures very different from ours.
I was concerned that it might have been a heavy going but not at all. It was told from the view point of a man living on the edge of a community and a professor who had a much better grasp of the world outside of the village. Despite the revolutionary madnesses, the worlds revealed were bordering on Utopian existences and I learned a little about bee keeping along the way.

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