[BOOK REVIEW]: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks

Rating: 5/5 stars

Year: 2006

Genre: Horror, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, epistolary 

Pages: 342

“Ignorance was the enemy. Lies and superstition, misinformation, disinformation. Sometimes, no information at all. Ignorance killed billions of people. Ignorance caused the Zombie War.”

Imagine that at some point in modern human history, there was a virus that turned people into undead flesh-eating killing machines which devastated the world, leaving a fatality rate of over 600 million and a never-ending war against an enemy that refuses to go down easy. Imagine this, and you get World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks. Presented to us as if it were a non-fictional account of a war that actually occurred, a fictionalised version of the author Max Brooks as a United Nations Postwar Commission officer who recorded individual accounts told by individuals from around the world including those from China, Russia, Antarctica, Australia, America, Israel, South Africa and even from those aboard the International Space Station. The story is split into eight chapters: 'Warnings', 'Blame', 'The Great Panic', 'Turning the Tide', 'Home Front USA', 'Around the World, and Above', 'Total War', and 'Good-byes', each chapter exploring the political, social, and religious, economic and environmental changes that occurred as a result of the war.

I have been a fan of zombie media for as long as I can remember. It started with my father showing me Shaun of the Dead when I was 10 and I was immediately fascinated with zombies as a concept, and well, the rest is history. That eventually led me to watch the sort of cool, sort of disappointing 2013 film adaptation of World War Z which made me even more interested in reading its source material. Needless to say, I wasn't disappointed when I eventually decided to pick up the book. I truly believe that after Shaun of the Dead, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War is one of the more accurate depictions of a zombie outbreak that I've seen thus far. Having it be told through eyewitness accounts certainly helped add to the realism of the book. Of course, it had its moments of intense action involving large hordes of zombies and the world's supply of ammunition, they were blended perfectly with the calmer moments that described the political and social downfall allowed for a more realistic angle to be put in place. I truly believe this is what makes the book so compelling, Brook's masterful writing and vivid descriptions of the war are enough to almost convince us that this really did happen, or at least give us a damn good idea of what is to come.