Tarzan and the Ant Men

ÖNSÖZ

(Preface)

Tarzan and the Ant Men is a novel by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, the tenth in his series of twenty-four books about the jungle hero Tarzan. It was first published as a seven-part serial in the magazine Argosy All-Story Weekly for February 2, 9, 16 and 23 and March 1, 8 and 15, 1924. It was first published in book form in hardcover by A. C. McClurg in September 1924. The story was also adapted for Gold Key Comics in Tarzan (1968).

In the book Master of Adventure: The Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Richard A. Lupoff places Tarzan and the Ant Men in his list of essential Burroughs novels and states that it represents Burroughs at the peak of his creative powers.

The story begins 1 year after the end of the previous novel (Tarzan and the Golden Lion) which would place it around 1936 which would make Tarzan around 47 years old. His son Korak, now at about 23 has a verbal child, the grandchild of Tarzan.

Tarzan, the king of the jungle, enters an isolated country called Minuni, inhabited by a people four times smaller than himself, the Minunians, who live in magnificent city-states which frequently wage war against each other.

Tarzan befriends the king, Adendrohahkis, and the prince, Komodoflorensal, of one such city-state, called Trohanadalmakus, and joins them in war against the onslaught of the army of Veltopismakus, their warlike neighbours.

He is captured on the battle-ground and taken prisoner by the Veltopismakusians, whose scientist Zoanthrohago conducts an experiment reducing him to the size of a Minunian, and the ape-man is imprisoned and enslaved among other Trohanadalmakusian prisoners of war. He meets, though, Komodoflorensal in the dungeons of Veltopismakus, and together they are able to make a daring escape.

Spanish actor/Tarzan lookalike Esteban Miranda, who had been imprisoned in the village of Obebe, the cannibal, at the end of the previous novel, Tarzan and the Golden Lion, also appears in this adventure.