New Book Release: "The Ardent Swarm" by Yamen Manai

by Rana Asfour

Nothing beats a book delivery & one in translation too! Can’t wait to dive into this!

From award-winning Tunisian-born author & engineer Yamen Manai comes a stirring allegory about a country in the aftermath of a single quest.

"The Ardent Swarm" centres around bee whisperer, Sidi, who lives on the outskirts of the desolate North African village of Nawa. One morning he wakes to find that a vicious swarm of hornets have killed all the inhabitants of his beehive. Devastated he heads to the city to get answers on where these hornets could have come from & more importantly how to stop them.

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 on the eve of the country’s first democratic elections.

The novel is translated from the French by Lara Vergnaud. She is a literary translator from the French. She is the recipient of the 2019 French Voices Grand Prize and two PEN/Heim Translation Grants, and was a finalist for the 2019 Best Translated Book Award. Her forthcoming translations include works by Joy Sorman, Mohamed Leftah, and Franck Bouysse. She currently lives in Washington, D.C.