World War Z was published in 2006. An oral history of the zombie war, it was written by Max Brooks, the son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft. Brooks cut his teeth on the Saturday Night Live writing team from 2001-2003, before writing his first book, the tongue-in-cheek Zombie Survival Guide. Given his previous work and his father’s comedic talent, many people expected World War Z to be light, humorous and inconsequential. It was not.
Right from the start, World War Z treats its subject absolutely seriously. It takes the form of a series of stories recounted by survivors of the zombie apocalypse, which takes place in what is presumably the near future. The stories have been assembled by a scientist compiling statistical information on the war for the United Nations; when his bosses insist that he removes individual data from his official report, he decides to preserve the tales independently for historical reasons. As you’d expect from a premise like this, the material covers all sorts of different viewpoints, from primary movers and shakers through to ordinary people who scraped through.
It’s a difficult approach to take when writing a book. The wide range of characters can be disjointed and difficult to identify with, and there’s always a danger of slipping into mawkish melodrama or gung-ho action. Brooks does a fantastic job, however. It’s very easy to forget you’re reading a work of fiction — apart from the zombies, of course. The characters are sympathetic, varied and totally believable. Some of their stories are touching; others are positively harrowing. As events unfold, you really get the feeling of what it would have been like to live through the experience, and to witness the scars that it left. It calls to mind similar real-world eyewitness accounts from previous conflicts, particularly Studs Terkel’s famous book of stories from WWII, The Good War. As if that wasn’t enough, there’s a healthy dose of social commentary in there as well.
World War Z gave a huge boost of new energy and potential to the Zombie genre, and I strongly recommend it to anyone with any fondness for our moany dead friends. It is currently under development as a movie with a script by J. Michael Straczinsky.
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