Yamen Manai
Yamen Manaï was born in 1980 in Tunis and currently lives in Paris. Both a writer and an engineer, Manaï explores the intersections of past and present, and tradition and technology, in his prose. In The Ardent Swarm, his first book to be translated into English, he celebrates Tunisia’s rich oral culture, a tradition abounding in wry, often fatalistic humor.
Tunisia
n remote North Africa, a solitary beekeeper named Sidi discovers his hives decimated by a mysterious hornet invasion. This ecological crisis unfolds as his country undergoes its first democratic election, exposing the tensions of post–Arab Spring political upheaval and the dangerous interplay between nature and power.