The Ardent Swarm. Yamen Manai

 Recommended: Yes

Spoiler : Yes. I will clearly state when to stop reading to avoid the spoiler.

I like reading writers from different countries. Their writing gives you a feel of the local culture, politics, social dynamics.

Yamen is from Tunisia. His book was written in French, published 2021 by a Tunisian publication to ensure that the book was accessible by Tunisian readers.I read the English translation. The period is after the Arab Spring when different parties - political and religious were trying to gain power through the first democratic elections. The book is also an allegory. You get to know a lot about bee keeping, and it’s super interesting! 

Sidi is a bee keeper, in a small village Nawa in northern Tunisia. No one cares about the village existence, and so the villagers lead a quite life with little excitement. The villagers are poor, the nearest school is miles away and no one listens to the news. With the old regime there wasn’t anything new ever.

Sidi lives a content life with his ‘girls’ - the bees, thousands of them. Everyone refers to the bees as his ‘girls’ and his love for his girls is quite known. What little farming is done in Nawa involves no chemicals, and so the honey his girls deliver is the best. He wears no protection when tending to the bees - they know him well, and shares the honey with the villagers. 

Until one day when thousands of his bees are found dead, in a matter of a few hours , slaughtered into two. This is around the time the pouts offers started showing interest in Nawa. Candidates from two parties come to garner their votes in the first ever democratic election.

The rest of the story is about Sidi’s quest to find his girl’s murderer(s) against the backdrop of the changing socio-political nature of the region. You will want to read this book to find the murderer(s). The quest takes you to Japan, and made me remember my trip to Japan. And in parallel the story of religious fanaticism (intruders) increasing in Tunisia and the effects on the lives of the natives. 

SPOILER ahead.

After keeping guard night and day, Sidi finally saw the culprit - the killer yellow hornet! Sidi knew the flairs and fauna of the region and realised that the hornet was not a native species. Where did it come from? He was especially worried since his bees would not know how to cope with a foreign species. Apparently the queen bee teaches her swarm on how to cope with attacks and intrusion. The information is passed on from the queen bee to the hive. Bee keepers introduce queen bees from different regions in new hives for the queen bee to pass on her knowledge, that then gets passed on to the next generation and the next and so on. Sidi races to his villagers to see if they had seen more of these hornets and had any idea where they came from. One villager had the info. He mentioned that the religious political party The God’s Party came with a lot of goodies, and one of the goodies came in a cardboard container that housed the hornet. Sidi followed the villager and found a hornet hive in the cardboard box that was used to distribute goods manufactured somewhere in China!

Sidi was devastated. How were his girls supposed to fight this intruder? Sidi believed in knowledge and headed to the big city to try and find the details if this hornet. But the city had changed. And he could not find the book shops. They were replaced by shops selling Chinese goods and everywhere were religious fanatics. He went in search of his god daughter. She and her husband were teachers in the university. With her help, they found that the hornet species was from Asia. And the Japanese bees had figured out a way to fight the hornet. He didn’t want to burden his god daughter and so left back for Nawa with this knowledge. His plan was to find the hives and eradicate the hornets. But that was temporary. The real solution was to find the queen bee who had the knowledge to fight the hornets. But those bees could only be found in Japan. 

The rest of the story is of his god daughter’s determination to help Sidi get the queen bee from Japan to ensure that Nawa has bees that support the ecosystem - the cross pollination, the flowers, the fruits.  

It’s a lovely story that takes you through the ups and downs of the main characters. Of Sidi’s success of getting the queen bee from Japan to build an ardent swarm to fight the murderous hornet!