Book Review: Anthill: A Novel by E.O. Wilson
Review by Susan Milius
By Science News
Connoisseurs of fine fiction had a shock in January when the New Yorker published a short story in which all the characters were ants. Now the greatly anticipated source of that excerpt has appeared as a full-length novel, with humans as characters too.
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Mostly the book follows Raphael Semmes Cody, who grows up in the fictional Nokobee County, a place inspired by real longleaf pine forests near Mobile, Ala. Wilson, a renowned Harvard ant expert and Pulitzer Prize–winning author, roamed those parts as a boy, and his deft details render the setting so vivid that the pine ecosystem becomes a character in its own right. The novel turns on the clash between a love for the last remnants of the South’s once-great forests and the region’s long-sought economic development.