World War Z

Last year was the year of the Vampire, and it seems set that 2013 will be the year of the Zombie. Don’t understand me wrong, Zombies have always been present in movies, TV shows, games and books. However only recently this genre has achieved mainstream success, probably through a larger amount of zombie games than ever, the show The Walking Dead as well as a large amounts of movies dealing with the topic.

Max Brooks, son of the famous director Mel Brooks, has popularised this genre in literature, with his books the Zombie Survival Guide (2003), World War Z (2006) and The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks (2009). In fact, one of his books, World War Z, is being released as a film in June 2013 with Brad Pitt as the main character. This should tell you how “mainstream” they have become. While I had read his books soon after their release, my recent re-reading of them as well as this now rising popularity of Z’s, made me think about writing a review for his second book, namely World War Z.

Inspired by a similar book based on World War II, as well as George A. Romero, the man nicknamed the “Godfather of Zombies”, it is styled as a set of personal recollections and interviews which deal with a global outbreak of Zombies. Each person’s story describes their own fight to survive, and together they describe the whole arc of the apocalypse. These anecdotes range from the human level, where a single person fights to make it through, all the way to the top dealing with the governments’ attempts at stemming the flood. The underlying emotional themes (e.g. fear, patriotism, greed etc.) that underlie each recollection also lead to a well-rounded book. Not really bloody or gory at all, this book deals more with economics, politics, and human feelings. The book looks at how society deals with possible extinction, which makes the book all the more powerful and much less “cheap” to read.

At the same time Max Brooks uses World War Z to describe the survivalist attitude that is permeating culture at this time, as well as criticising the weakness exhibited by our political system. Basically, he says that democracy is great, but in time of crisis political willpower may be lacking, as is shown by the example of the world governments (excluding Israel) in the early days of the war.

Another thing that struck me was the attitude of one of the survivors, a Palestinian youth, who in the book does not believe in Zombies, thinking instead it is an Israeli trick to reclaim Palestine lands. You may be able to laugh at this short-sightedness since you are reading a book called World War Z, where zombies are obviously not a trick by any governmental institution. However, if you were in the same situation, with no prior knowledge, would you really believe in Zombies? I didn’t think so.

This interesting format was a great contrast to the usual zombie fare, as instead of focusing on one group and their needs and stories it tries to describe the effect such an epidemic would have on the world as a whole. This international approach encouraged me to read more, as it shows many different aspects of the human condition, as well as how different cultures deal with the same threat. Also, who doesn’t like reading about a huge battle between the United States army and a horde of zombies that just destroyed New York, with the whole tanks and missiles thing!

One thing that did annoy me about the format, though, was that Brooks wrote some of the short stories so well that I just wanted to know what happened next. In fact some of the anecdotes were so gripping that I could have read a book with those stories expanded to novel length. Thus, when the end of that particular recollection came, I was slightly frustrated. That made it slightly hard to have a continuous flow throughout the book.

Max Brooks creates a well-crafted book that does redefine this genre in times of renewed interest. With an enthralling array of stories, it is well worth the read. If you are a fan of the zombie genre, get to it! If you are not, and are just curious, get to it! Trust me, its worth your time.