Sidi is an elderly beekeeper in a remote Muslim village living the quiet life. But den! Giant hornets arrive and start slaughtering his beloved bees. Coincidentally, his unnamed country has just gone through the Arab Spring and democracy suddenly appears. But den! Here come the Islamic fundamentalists. What’sa humble beekeeper to do?!
Even if all you did was read the paragraph above and never picked up this novel (and it’s not great so I wouldn’t recommend it), you can tell Yamen Manai’s story is heavy on the metaphors. Bees = ordinary people who happen to be Muslim, hornets = ISIS-types. Uh huh. And… ? And that’s about all that Manai has to offer here.
I liked some parts of the novel. Like showing the reader how fundamentalists recruit people (bribery/lies/exploitation) while reminding us that Muslims are mostly the victims of terrorism and don’t support extremism. I also enjoyed getting an idea of what life is like in this remote part of the world.
But it’s mostly a very forgettable story with little going on and no real point being made besides “we gotta stand up to the fundamentalists”, which, duh. And it’s a nitpick but Japanese people don’t say “konnichiwa” when answering the phone, they say “moshi moshi” - I don’t think Manai did much research on that section of the book.
It’s fairly well-written so it’s easy to read but The Ardent Swarm is still an unimpressive novel that falls short of saying anything meaningful about its substantial subject or tell a compelling narrative.
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