Having just read the most literary of all zombie novels makes one thing quite clear: haute lit & this particular horror genre simply don't mix. But that doesn't make the effort any less outstanding, unique, or outrageous. "WWZ" takes a scatterplot approach to begin to tell what's happened to the world after the zombie apocalypse has transpired. All accounts are so definitive, so individual as to seem 100% authentic. We get accounts all the way from the very heights of the social echelons (Veep, Army generals...) to the rantings of average civilians (like a woman with a 5 year-old's sensibility, for instance).

There is a type of reader out there for this type of narrative. They will adore the militaristic accounts-- though, admittedly, not my cup of tea. But the additions to zombie lore are awesome! From quislings (i.e. live zombie impersonators) to zombie-detecting dogs.

A very pleasant surprise.

TBT, not a huge fan of the zombie sub-genre: never watched an episode of the Walking Dead, never really bought into it as a fantasy vehicle.

So – I picked this up with not so much trepidation as an allowance that I probably would not love it. I didn’t LOVE it, but liked it a lot more than I expected I would.

Here’s the thing:

It’s not JUST about an I Am Legend scenario where the world turns into monsters. Well – it sort of IS about that – but it’s also about a lot more. Author Max Brooks (son of Mel “It’s good to be the KING!” Brooks) serves this up with a steaming hot portion of socio-economic views, cultural observations and more than a generous side order of HAVEATYOU! post-apocalyptic fudge.

You probably already can guess the premise, so no spoilers – there is a global pandemic where damn near everyone gets turned into zombies. We’re talking Aliens Bill Paxton “GAME OVER MAN!” world-wide catastrophe. MOST of humanity is wiped out.

But Brooks’ narrative, told from the shifting perspectives of the survivors in a kind of post-war journalistic oral history novel (patterned after Studs Turkel’s 1984 The Good War), is appealing for it’s plucky spirit and charismatic delivery. Not just blood and guts, we get to know first hand about this event from start to finish and all the details in between. It’s the human element of this that works so well, the near remembrances of the survivors told from their perspectives.

I loved that Brooks develops a working vocabulary for the post-war survivors. The human soldiers call their zombie opponents “Zach” and he makes the astute observation that they no longer needed consultants and executive directors – humanity needed carpenters and gunsmiths. I was also drawn to one of the survivor’s recollection that his group loved to go into battle to the ear splitting tunes of Iron Maiden’s The Trooper.

So if you were like me and avoided this because it was just another zombie book – go ahead and give it a try, it’s actually pretty good.

This is a truly amazing book. I'm not someone that would normally read horror, war or zombie books, but World War Z is so much more than that. An insightful and in depth look at what social, political, religious, and environmental changes would take place because of an apocalyptic event. What makes it even more interesting is that it is written in the form of interviews with people of different nationalities. Obviously war strategy plays a big part of the book, especially as it was inspired by The Good War: An Oral History of World War Two, but I found the different approaches adopted by different countries intriguing. It also looks at the human side of the story - how the worst of times can create heroes and villains. Lastly, it was such a nice experience reading about South Africa doing something well (although controversial), and not only featuring because of racism. I was very impressed with the accuracy of the facts on my country, the author must have done quite a bit if research on all the countries mentioned. If you've seen the movie, don't think you know anything about the book. I liked both, but they have almost nothing in common. Highly recommended.

Zombie stories have been told in many different ways and teach us many different things. Some zombies are slow and teach us about the dangers of mass consumerism. Some zombies are fast and teach us about the dangers of infectious diseases. Sometimes the zombies take the backseat to a small group of unlikeable zombie-infestation survivors who sit around bickering, making poor decisions, and having circular, intro-level philosophical arguments until you are praying that the undead will rip their tongues from their still moving mouths. In this latter scenario, I am of course referring to the television version of The Walking Dead.

Max Brooks’ World War Z is different from anything you’ve seen or read before. I’m fairly certain about that. This is because Brooks has taken as his inspiration not George Romero or Robert Kirkman, but Studs Terkel.

That’s right, Studs Terkel: the famous, Pulitzer Prize winning oral historian.

Terkel’s The Good War and Hard Times, his most famous works, are not traditional nonfiction narratives. Rather, they are oral histories that collect the stories of a vast web of people, all with differing points of view. Each of these individuals tells their own story, a small part of the whole, in the first person, using their own words. Terkel would introduce the different stories with a dateline and a short, indented paragraph that explained a little bit about the each person. Then, he would stand back and let that person have their say.

This is the exact template that Brooks (acknowledging his homage) uses in World War Z. And I think that’s important for would-be readers to know. This isn’t your typical zombie novel. It’s not your typical novel at all. It has embraced the oral history conceit and plays that out to the end.

In the world of World War Z, ten years have passed since the zombie apocalypse. The UN has decided to compile a report on the conflict, with Brooks playing the role of investigator. The official UN report relies heavily on facts and figures. Accordingly, Brooks decides to publish the personal stories – a collection of anecdotes – separately, in order to give readers a sense of how the Zombiegeddon felt.

World War Z has eight chapters, not including an introduction, and within each of those chapters is a half-dozen or more remembrances from people around the globe. These chapters go in chronological order, so that the first chapter retells the outbreak of the zombie virus, while the final chapter covers the mopping up. In between there is a whole lot of blunt force trauma.

The marvel of this book is the scope of its imagination. Conceptually, it is brilliant. Max Brooks has created a gritty, fully-realized, epic-sized scenario for the end of the world. And what’s more, he seems to have taken a giddy delight in doing so. Jumping from character to character, we “learn” how the disaster started and spread, and how countries as different as China and Israel dealt with it. Other witnesses describe the difficulty in fighting the zombies, and Brooks goes technology-geek as he rattles off made-up weapons systems (mixed in with actual weapons systems) used to combat the undead:

No one thought about how many rounds the artillery would need for sustained operations, how many rockets for the MLRS, how many canister shots…the tanks had these things called canister shots…basically a giant shotgun shell. They fired these little tungsten balls…not perfect you know, wasting like a hundred balls for every G, but f—k, dude, at least it was something! Each Abrams only had three, three! Three out of a total loadout of forty! The rest were standard HEAT or SABOT! Do you know what a “Silver Bullet,” an armor-piercing, depleted-uranium dart is going to do to a group of walking corpses? Nothing!

Brooks’ previous zombie-related book, The Zombie Survival Guide, was a tongue-in-cheek, hipster must-have. World War Z has had its tongue ripped from its cheek. It is grim, as in, Zombie War veterans suffering from PTSD grim. It paints a bleak picture of a shrinking number of defenders facing overwhelming odds. Brooks’ zombies are old school. They are the slow and shuffling pre-28 Days Later undead. Even so, Brooks clearly outlines what makes them such an unstoppable force. He makes you imagine an enemy in the hundreds of millions, that doesn’t get rattled, doesn’t get scared, and doesn’t stop, ever. And he also forces you to imagine psyches of the survivors, who among other things, are forced to dole out hundreds of head injuries in order to survive.

The reality in a book like this is that some of the stories are going to be better than others. It would go too far to say that World War Z maintains an absolutely consistent high level of quality throughout. I don’t think it does.

Some of the individual histories are awesome. Incredible. Some of them are good enough to be short stories, tracing fierce dramatic arcs. Others have the twists and turns of a Twilight Zone episode. Among the standouts: a girl and her family escape to the north, hoping the cold will save them, but soon realize that despite preparations, they don’t have enough supplies (doomsday preppers take note); a downed pilot must make her way to safety through zombie-infested territory, with only the radio guidance of a Skywatcher to help her through; a Chinese nuclear submarine goes rogue and discovers an ocean filled with sea-zombies.

It is to Brooks’ credit that he strives for a breadth and diversity of experiences. There is a chapter devoted solely to the United States, but he gives more than ample time to zombie survivors from all corners of the globe.

One of the problems I had with this book, though, is despite these diverse characters, the narrative voices all sound the same. It doesn’t matter if you are a Chinese doctor, an Indian engineer, a wild child who allegedly can barely speak, or an American soldier. All the narrators express themselves in the same way. The only difference is that some people use more jargon and slang than others. Thus, it was really hard to differentiate each person, except on the basis of how cool or memorable their encounters were. This lead to me not really caring about anyone on a human level. All these characters were nothing more than names and a means to execute a concept.

Moreover, by utilizing the conceit of an oral history, Brooks removed the direct threat of the zombies. All these stories happened in the past, some as long as a decade ago. There is no longer any danger. You know that the storyteller has survived. Sure, lots of people died, but no one that the reader knows about, cares about, or can relate to. There are dozens of times when an oral historian sighs heavily, reaches for a smoke, and commiserates about their losses, but these are just words that ring hollow.

Despite this, Brooks has succeeded masterfully at envisioning a nearly-ended world. I am a fan (I admit, guiltily) of apocalyptic fiction, from On the Beach to The Last Ship to The Road. Most end-of-the-world lit strives for realism in describing the destruction of society and the nascent civilization left struggling in doom’s wake. All these books seek to teach you a lesson by evoking the mortal dread of abandoned automobiles, burnt-out cities, and unburied corpses. World War Z is as successful as any other novel I’ve read in fulfilling the requirements of apocalyptic fiction.

Of all the things there are to fear in the world, zombies do not rate very high. And of all the things that might end our world, I fear zombies less than killer bees, and slightly more than killer dolphins. Still, Brooks has done such an incredible job visualizing the fictional results of a zombie horde that part of me felt it was all quite possible.

I had no intention of reading/listening to this book. I wasn't holding out for any reason other than I'm not really "into" zombies. A combination of factors wore me down (which isn't even the right term- it's not like my ears were aggressively pursued by this audiobook)- the reviews from my "respected" reader friends, the all star cast of voices (Alan Alda, Rob Reiner, John Turturro), the Audie Award, and, of course, the fact that it was free a click away (thanks online library). Summary point: I did not expect to like this and I totally did.

Since I'm among the last living beings to read/listen to this I don't think I'm depriving the world of much by keeping this short and vague. I had never thought through the geopolitical and logistical details of a zombie apocalypse, and it turns out that's a pretty fun thing to do. The n  Quislingsn, the n  LMOEsn, the tactical implications of facing an enemy not subject to the constraints of being n  Bred, Fed and Ledn! Such fun!

Don't expect me to go Tina Belcher any time soon, but I give this audiobook my unsolicited (and likely undesirable) seal of approval.

n  n

This book is perfection!

I dont have anything negative to say about World War Z. This book is about the worldwide fallout from a zombie apocalypse. I dont really think of this book as a zombie book because the zombies are the least frightening aspect of this book. Humans are as per usual our own worst enemies.

A Must Read!

Now I need to watch the movie.

I am not a big zombie person. In fact, I couldn’t care less about, for example, The Walking Dead. I just am not into zombies. Never have been. Okay, 28 Days Later was okay. Okay. And Shaun of the Dead was actually good, but that’s because it made fun of all the zombie tropes. But really – I do not understand the fascination with zombies.

So, of course, I’m going to read World War Z, hate it, and give it one star, maybe two, if I’m feeling generous, right?

Wrong.

Now, let’s not kid ourselves, this is not a great novel, definitely not a masterwork of literature. Its prose is utilitarian. Interesting, in places, but lacking eloquence – maybe intentionally so. Because this is a novel about people, many of them ordinary people, dealing with an infestation, a war against those who were once family, friends, fellow-countrymen, but are now undead.
But it’s not about the zombies. Not really much at all. And this made it, not a great novel, but a good novel. It’s really more about what it means to be human, and all that comes from that status, good and evil. It’s about dreams, family, bravery, cowardice, love, friendship, terror, technology, survival, profiteering, pride, and regret. The zombies are merely a foil against which the human stories are set. And that works to its advantage. Sure, you’ll find a few harrowing accounts of battles with the living dead, but the most terrifying aspects of the book lie in what humans, driven by fear, will do to other humans. It’s messy and complicated, tragically triumphant with a question mark after it, sort of like life. It will leave you asking questions about how you would react in the circumstances, as presented. The answers might be a little uncomfortable. Would you have what it takes to survive such an apocalypse and, more importantly, would you want to have what it takes? The novel cannot answer this for you. In fact, it poses many questions to which there is no one good answer or questions that are altogether unanswerable.

One of the greatest questions implicit in the novel is not “What is a zombie,” but, much more poignantly, “What is a human”? World War Z will present that question to you again and again, and that question will haunt you long after you’ve finished the book, rearing its ugly head from time to time, like a slow-moving army of the undead.

n   “Most people don't believe something can happen until it already has. That's not stupidity or weakness, that's just human nature.”n

Even though the 2013 movie adaptation starring Brad Pitt probably brought Max Brooks' novel more wide-spread attention, there is basically nothing except the title and the existence of zombies that both works hold in common. When divorced from the loosely inspired movie, World War Z as a novel holds up surprisingly well as a striking exploration of human nature in the face of crisis, survivalism, solidarity vs. isolationism, and the social and political repercussions in the fallout of an unforeseen event of crisis. A lot of the socioeconomic subtext bears surprising parallels to the fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic, the aforementioned quote included.

The basic concept of Max Brooks' World War Z is to provide a compilation of globally conducted personal interviews with survivors of the zombie pandemic. Personal accounts and interviews from fictional characters all over the world, from East Asia to Israel, from Hawaii to Cuba, from Antarctica to Russia, are annotated to give insight into the political and social consequences of a worldwide pandemic that disrupts the way of life humanity followed before.

Even though the political and social commentary is World War Z's predominant strength, I found the suspenseful accounts of individual stories during the initial outbreak most riveting, with undoubtedly a couple of George A. Romero inspirations sprinkled between the lines.

Which also leads to my personal problems with this book: with so many individual accounts presented in an interview style, it becomes rather difficult to care for any of the characters or stories presented. The backdrop of societal chaos becomes the most interesting aspect to explore, but the respective stories included in this book work more like short stories in their own right. It becomes barely possible to care for any of the individual stories, which makes it all the more redundant to then be presented by an array of closing chapters meant to give closure to some of the stories introduced earlier. Still, the reports and experiences are authentic and interesting each in their own right, and even though I did not particularly care, I found myself gripped through almost the entire novel.

Then again, this book is the opposite of every other zombie novel or film that has been done before, and probably delves deeper into the subject than anything I have seen or read before, developing a complex mythology surrounding the premise of the zombie pandemic and exploring the fallout from every angle imaginable. That's nothing short of impressive, and it's also where Max Brooks' novel shines the brightest.

World War Z is an interesting project. A self proclaimed Oral History of the Zombie War, the book is presented as a collection of oral interviews with key survivors of the global war against the undead, conducted and compiled by the unnamed narrator (an agent of the UN's postwar commission). Contrary to the geocentrism of most novels concerned with the end of humanity, Brooks is concerned with a World War - his interviewees come from various countries, and their combined testimonies all provide an insight into changes which swept the globe as its result.

Brooks's novel is a double-edged sword. On one hand, his effort at providing an international perspective of the conflict is admirable - most of its literary and cinematic cousins usually focus on a small group of survivors who fight their way through their home country (usually the U.S.), and the rest of the world is is pushed back to provide merely background information - newspaper scraps, bites from television clips - if it's included at all. Brooks's tours the planet, and gathers eyewitness reports from citizens of multiple countries - these range from today's giants to small island nations - and whose roles in the war varied greatly: doctors who saw the first outbreaks, generals who guided their armies in active resistance, and ordinary people who were trying to escape their homes before they turned into their graves.

BUT precisely because of its nature it also has a significant drawback: a lack of a single, unifying thread which would connect all the entries into a coherent narrative sequence. Although Brooks maintains relatively stable chronology the book remains a series of relatively short individual accounts, independent from one another, which literally jump all over the planet from one spot to the other. Brooks doesn't give himself either the time or space to get his readers emotionally invested in the fate of his characters; there are no heroes to root for or antagonists to root against. Although he tries to diversify his cast of interviewees as much as possible, he doesn't quite have the chops to pull it off. By nature oral storytelling is very intimate - the collected story is presented as a verbatim account as told by the person, inseparably tied to his/hers character, mood, style, age, culture, ethnicity, nationality, social class, education level ...the amount of factors which have to be included and emulated by an author who attempts to present his story as a whole series of such diverse accounts is enormous, and requires copious research along with considerable linguistic skills. It is then perhaps no surprise that the diverse people of World War Z sounds suspiciously similar to one another, and all point toward the same person writing them. This doesn't have to be a criticism of Brook's style - it's the criticism of precisely that style as being transparent in all these accounts, which should be diverse and unique. Some of the depictions border on cliches ranging from the known and tiresome - tough military generals, corrupt doctors, tough army chicks - to almost dumbfounding: there are two Japanese characters in this novel, and one of them is a blind ninja-zen master, who fights the zombies with a stick. The other just uses an ordinary Katana he finds in an apartment, and later becomes the blind man's apprentice. No joking.

Since we know in advance that humanity ensured its survival, all we really have left is to discover how they got there. While Brooks aims to present his story from different locations, he falls into his own booby trap and is unable to develop any real tension. Brooks's interviews read like a series of disconnected vignettes - a series of half-finished ideas, employing themes and methods familiar to the genre but not nurtured enough to stand on their own as separate stories, lacking both character and plot development. It does not help that the reader is totally dependent on the characters to fill him in on every small detail, and in places the book turns into nothing more than a big infodump - buying the interesting moment under a heavy amount of (often technical) slog.

Last, but not least: It's obvious that Brooks thought for a considerable amount of time at how the world and individual people would react to and change after such an epidemic, the social and political commentary still comes out as localized and rather ham-fisted. Just look at what's happening in the Middle East: Iran not only is a nuclear state, but also uses its nuclear weapons to nuke Pakistan out of existence after the Pakistanis are unable to stop the flow of their sick refugees into Iranian territory. Pakistan (which has nuclear weapons in real life) nukes Iran right back, and both nations wipe each other out of existence. Israel, on the other hand, is shown to be as almost fantastically benevolent and humane - in the novel only Israel knows how to protect itself from the plague by erecting proper fortifications along its borders, and not only doesn't nuke any other nation (which is ironic, considering the fact that it's the only nation in the Middle East which actually has the capabilities to do so) but also takes in all Arab refugees who have a clean bill of health (not zombified). Technically they had to be Palestinian, but nobody really checked. The two sides kiss and make up for past conflicts, and go on to form a new country called "United Palestine" (Wonder if Brooks remembers the name of the Israeli PM who said that there was no such thing as Palestinians). This turn of events jumps out of the blue in a book which clearly aims to mimic real accounts, but it uncannily resembles actual relationships between the U.S. and both nations - the long-lasting and extremely generous support and approval of Israel and its actions, and the demonization and vilification of Iran - it being included by president Bush as one of the three countries in the Axis of Evil, and with the Obama administration making remarks about their "deep commitment" to preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, which includes possible U.S. military action. Perhaps it's just me, but this makes me shiver and remember all the fearmongering of the early 2000's which was based on Saddam supposedly having nuclear weapons in Iraq, and the subsequent invasion of said country. Remember how well that went?
There's more of this kind of perspective: Cuba is OK because it turns democratic and Castro votes himself out of power, and becomes the world's most vibrant economy. China also becomes democratic and gives total independence to Tibet, which becomes the world's most populated city. Not all nations are so lucky. The Saudis burn their oil fields (???), and there's no grand Korean reunification party - North Koreans disappear from the face of the planet, and it's suggested that they might have gone underground to pursue more communism with their Dear Leader.
Russia is actually called "Ivan" by some of the characters, and this kind of sympathy prevails for the country - Brooks has it establish a theocracy at the end of the book, and start annexing the former Soviet territories in an attempt to restart an Empire. The Russians also turn their women into walking incubators - it's implied that they're killed after they can't breed anymore. Interestingly, not a word is said about all the crazy religious zealots from the Bible Belt, and such a scenario is particularly interesting to read when American conservative politicians push for restricting abortion, access to contraceptives and even sexual education in their country.

in the end, the greatest flaw of World War Z is that it's too isolated from itself - some of the vignettes contain ideas which would greatly benefit from further development, but it never happens. Brooks could have added or subtracted 20 chapters from his work, and nothing of value would be gained or lost. World War Z reads like a collection of non-connected and unfinished short stories: while they're definitely readable and often well-constructed, they simply lack the weight to stand on their own and make a proper impact. As I mentioned before, the effort needed to create a work of fiction resembling an oral history is enormous, and I think that Max Brooks simply set for himself a too big task, and had to resort to simplifying it - and published the book, for better or worse, looking as it does. It can be intriguing to those interested in apocalyptic fiction, but it's a hardly groundbreaking or life-changing reading experience.

Most people don’t believe something can happen until it already has. That’s not stupidity or weakness, that’s just human nature.
...
Looking back, I still can't believe how unprofessional the news media was. So much spin, so few hard facts. All those digestible sound bites from an army of 'experts' all contradicting one another, all trying to seem more 'shocking' and 'in-depth' than the last one. It was all so confusing, nobody seemed to know what to do.

I first read this book at least ten years ago, back when Mr. Brooks’ choice to use the science and language of epidemiology was simply considered a clever way to write a zombie novel. So, how does this story feel now that we’re living through an actual pandemic? It’s even more impressive. Mr. Brooks spent considerable effort making his story realistic, and life has shown how right he was. A pandemic that begins in China and engulfs the world, helped by a Chinese government suppressing the truth. The willful blindness of the public (aided by a broken media system) to grasp the true magnitude of the outbreak. Cynical charlatans selling bogus cures. The failure of the international community to work together to stop the outbreak, and politicians sadly more focused on the economy than the public health. There are so many things in this book that might have felt farfetched before but look eerily prescient now.

The oral history method of storytelling is used to great effect here. The interviewees come from all walks of life; this is not just a ‘heroes and generals’ type of story. These first-person vignettes are often narrow in focus, moving, and even harrowing, and each character has a distinctive voice and manner of speaking. But by regularly shifting to a new narrator—across all seven continents, in cities and under them, on and under the oceans, even in outer space—we eventually get the full, grand scope of the story: the initial outbreak, safe zones, refugees, ecological problems, the loss of and eventual rebuilding of hope and civilization.

World War Z is a completely original, wonderfully imaginative, and chillingly realistic novel. It’s a good read that has become a must read.

P.S. If you can find the unabridged audiobook (it was originally released with only an abridged one), it’s very good and has a great cast.

Honestly, I didn't finish this because I lost all momentum on it after a string of interrupted lunch breaks but what I did read, I liked quite a bit.

World War Z is an account of the zombie apocalypse, told by the survivors in interviews. This structure made the book very readable when people weren't trying to talk to me on my lunch break. A zombie book is an easy thing to fuck up and this one was decidedly unfucked.

Max Brooks ladles out the details of the zombie apocalypse in easily digestible, brain-sized morsels. I found it chilling and fairly realistic as far as zombie apocalypses go. Instead of a killfest, it's more of a thinker.

I don't normally rate things I don't finish, let alone rate one so highly. I fully intend hang on to this one to read properly in the future. Four out of five stars.

n

New week, New BookTube Video - all about the best (and worst) literary apocalypses to live through!

The Written Review



Humanity survived Zombie apacolypse.

Like after any great tragedy, the government wants a record.

Max Brooks is their oral historian.

Only, when he hands his documents, the bureaucracy whittles it down to the bare facts.

Humans, over every nation, dragged their bone weary bodies through this war.

They are now faced with the numbing task of rebuilding society.

They deserve to have their stories told. So, he publishes the true account of World War Z.

Told in a series of vignettes, we listen in on interviews as Brooks travels both the country and the world. And one thing is certain, life with zombies is a chilling tale.

n  The monsters that rose from the dead, they are nothing compared to the ones we carry in our heartsn

The vignettes are absolutely riveting. There's a bit of the regular zombie murder mayhem but the story focuses on the human side of things. How the survivors, survived.

There's the blind man who fought off a hoard with no more than a blunt staff. Some people lost their minds - succumbing to tree belief that they have joined the dead. There's the unintentionally cannibalistic family - and so much more.

n  Most people don't believe something can happen until it already has.n

Audiobook comments:
--Read by Max Brooks, Alan Alda, John Turturro, Rob Reiner, Mark Hamill, Alfred Molina, Simon Pegg, Henry Rollins and Martin Scorsese
--Highly recommended you listen to this novel - it's a quality production.
--Every voice is country-specific and the actors read very convincingly. It feels like I'm next to Max as he interviews the survivors.

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