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World War Z: by Max Brooks
An Oral History of the Zombie War
Max Brooks has followed up his hit, The Zombie Survival Guide, with his less funny and more brilliantly imagined work, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. In this more substantial work, Brooks narrates as an unknown journalist who is rendering an account of the zombie apocalypse through a series of interviews with key figures in the battle against the zombie hoards. What he creates is an intricate and amazing work of cultural significance, similar in vision to George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. Brooks uses this new sub-genre (yes, zombie literature is now its own genre) to explore the open, tasty wounds in society.
One of the more imaginative works released in the past three years, Z, follows the story of the zombie outbreak in Asia and tracks the zombie “disease” as it spreads quickly throughout the world. When the world, particularly the U.S., realizes that it has an apocalypse on their hands, it is already too late.
The U.S. military is stretched thin and weary from a nameless “on-going foreign war”, and even worse, their precision-strike weapons are useless when attempting to fight legions of the undead. Who needs to fire a three million dollar cruise missile from a thousand miles away when all it takes to dispatch a zombie is a good old clubbing to the head? The typical American businessman suddenly finds himself in a bit of a pickle as well. Through the rise of technology industries in the U.S. and the decline of blue-collar jobs, the American population is lacking in skills that are necessary to survive the apocalypse, such as engine repair, building, stonework, etc. Luckily, the illegal immigrants are there to pick up the slack and thus, former CEOs are being instructed and led by their landscapers and mechanics in this war of attrition. The real horror is the sense that everything Brooks implies is true. America will not bode well when the zombies come.
The U.S. is not the only focus of the book. Z is inherently a work of global fiction and outlines weaknesses in every country and culture. From the black market sale of human organs in China to a confrontation between Iran and Pakistan, World War Z lands a zombie- crushing blow to the modern world. It reminds us that in spite of its technology and science, humans can still be food. -Marc Fitch
