Wednesday, December 15, 2010

World War Z

This novel, by Max Brooks, perfectly fits in with my taste in post-apocalyptic literature as of late.  It's modeled after The Good War by Studs Terkel, which is a collection of firsthand accounts of World War II survivors.  There are fictional interviews with  everyone from deep sea divers to the doctor who treated the first reported zombie case in China, and it's all just so intriguing.
So the premise is that Brooks has written a UN report about the zombie war that destroyed governments and societies all over the world, but his supervisor thinks the report has too much human interest.  Brooks has taken out the personal interviews and put together his own book, which describes the effects of war on several aspects of life.  Brooks hears from a US soldier who fought in the well-publicized Yonkers mission, a failed military attack against zombies; a black market surgeon in Rio who accidentally gives a man an infected kidney; the man who helped blow up a bridge between Iran and Pakistan to stop the flow of zombies into the country.  The book is broken up into several sections, describing the beginning of the zombie infection, then the way countries deal with the outbreak, and the eventual rebirth of society.
Though there's not really a plot here, it's fascinating to see the way an author thinks the world will react to an attack of this magnitude.  Obviously, only read if you're also in a post-apocalyptic mood.
Oh, and think a zombie attack is even mildly possible.

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