mike_morse 's review for:

The Ardent Swarm by Yamen Manai

3.0

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This is one of those books where I think the author tried to do too much (and in a rather short book at that). There is the story of the beekeeper and his bees attacked by huge hornets, and the story of the fledgling democracy, attacked (I guess) by Islamist fundamentalists. I suppose one is a reflection of the other, but I think it's a clumsy reflection. The Goodreads blurb contains this: "brilliantly accessible modern-day parable". I don't think it's any of those things. Others say its an allegory, but I don't see that either, perhaps because of my lack of knowledge of Tunisian culture and history. Where the book really goes off the rails, I think, is when the author compares the culture of the fictitious Arab country in the book with Japan's. It's not that it's not an interesting comparison, it is just so shallow, and the caution that the Japanese culture is not as great as it seems because there are large adult sex shops seems shallower still.