Empire Of Ants (french)

Jonathan Wells and his young family moves to a Paris flat, inherited from an Uncle with a single mysterious warning included: to never go down into the cellar. But when the family dog goes missing, Jonathan, his wife, and child venture down into the cellar and vanish into a strange world.  Empire of Ants is brilliant novel that explores the mysteries of another civilization -- as foreign to us as we are to them. Empire of Ants is often compared to Watership Down and the comparison is apt -- the civilization of ants envisioned by Bernard Werber is intricately detailed, fascinating, and absolutely real.  Werber alternates between the human story and ant story seamlessly. While lesser authors would struggle with how to capture this story and express it in a digestible manner, Werber handles it with ease. The ants come off as so utterly real that you can barely distinguish the ant tale from the human tale. It's a story that forces you to look at yourself -- and the human race -- in a new, unique way -- as an outsider looking at the strange, lumbering mammals, the nonsensical rules that bind us and control us.  Some of the richness of language and poetry is lost in the translation from French to English, but the core gist of the story comes off well and the translation mostly works. Your perception of the world and of ants will never be the same after you finish this novel. Indeed, you will never, ever look at an ant the same way again.