
Ghost in the Medellín
Julianne Pachico’s The Anthill is a story of homecoming and return in urban postwar Medellín. Yet like many protagonists in the “return of the native” trope throughout the history of the novel, from Thomas Hardy’s Clym Yeobright to Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo, the book’s heroine, Maria Carolina, can’t quite go home again. Set in the wake of the 2016 peace deal between the Colombian government and FARC militias, The Anthill documents a city in which the twin missiles of tourism and development have begun to wreck the landscape. Within this context, Lina has come back to her home city from England