Description: When Jonathan Wells inherits his uncle's Paris apartment, it comes with a stern warning: "Never go down in the cellar!" But when the family dog bounds down the basement steps, he has no choice but to follow. Soon he too has disappeared -- and his wife, son and various explorers and would-be rescuers also vanish into its depths.

Meanwhile, in a nearby park, a young female ant sets out to learn about the strange new weapon that has been killing off her sisters. While solving the mystery, the young female becomes the queen of a great city -- the pinnacle of ant civilization, thanks to such technological breakthroughs as harnessing the power of water -- and uncovers the eerie secret of Jonathan's cellar.

"Empire of the Ants" is a brilliant evocation of a hidden world as complex as our own, where boats are built with leaves and greenflies are domesticated to be milked like cows; and even more violent, where wars are fought with sprays of glue and acids that can dissolve a snail. Its citizens communicate not with sounds but with molecules of scent and can merge their thoughts by locking antennae in "absolute communication".

This extraordinary novel, like Watership Down, not only reveals the byzantine marvels of another civilization, but also shows how much it has to teach us.

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