World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max BrooksMy review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
One of my favorite movies is Contact. Besides the fact that it has Jodie Foster, I like it because it's less about alien contact and more about how people would react if we really DID contact aliens.
Likewise, World War Z isn't so much about zombies as it is about what people would do if there were a real zombie infestation. As much as possible, Brooks keeps a realistic bent to the events in the book. The infestation is presented as a highly virulent disease, and the author "interviews" people all around the world about how humanity recovered from the disease. Each story is told by a different person, from a different perspective. As a result, the reader is presented the facts exclusively through the experiences and biases of the characters in the book. It's a book that ultimately is much more about humans than zombies.
I'm not a particular fan of horror books, but if there are more of them that are written this well and executed so intelligently, I'd definitely read them.
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1 comment:
Hatian Zombies are actually created when a person retrieves a potion from a tribal witch doctor. The potion is derived from the poisionous blowfish. When given to an enemy, the potion induces a catatonic state in which the person is believed to be dead. Since the person is unlikely to see a doctor to confirm death, he or she is then burried alive. Occasionally the person wakes up from this catatonic state and emerges from the tomb. Usually the victim has suffered brain damage while in the tomb due to oxygen deprivation. So the person "returns from the dead" as a zombie, a brain damaged person that may be so severely impaired that he or she cannot speak. Go Hati, what a country!
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