Book review: World War Z: An Oral History Of The Zombie War.

World War Z: An Oral History Of The Zombie War is just that: nothing more than a series of interviews conducted by a narrator, who is identified as an agent of the UN Postwar Commission, relaying the experiences of various participants from all over the world in different stages of an apocalyptic zombie war now ended.  The zombies themselves are human victims of a highly contagious virus (origin unknown) that quickly kills the infected and then “reanimates” them into walking dead.   They are impervious to trauma, to the elements, and even can function under water at great depths.  Only destroying their brains (“aim for the head!”) can kill them.  That or decay but that takes years and in colder climes decades.  They are utterly fearless and solely bent on attacking humans and consuming flesh – infecting and converting into zombies any injured who escape a mauling.  They are slow and uncoordinated and announce their presence with moans.  They freeze in winter, but then thaw and come at you again in the spring.  You can chop them in half and the torso will crawl after you, arms reaching for your ankles to bring you down.  The ones under the water  rise up from the beneath the waves to pull you down or board refugee ships causing widespread panic and massacres.

Geometric progression quickly grew their numbers into the hundreds of millions; they rampaged across the globe and destroyed or converted to the undead much of humanity, caused atomic wars between paranoid Iran and Pakistan leaving a mild nuclear winter effect, ended the advance of modern civilization and drove what was left of a panicking world population into the far reaches of the planet—way north, underground, the high mountains, the sea or into armed compounds and quarantined nation-states.  It is a classic vision of the reprimativized man such global catastrophes could release in all of us. 

What author Max Brooks (the son of comedic genius Mel Books interestingly enough) does here is create a tapestry of anecdotes through which we can discern how the war started, what were its darkest hours, and how a working strategy of re-conquest was developed and implemented by what was left of the United Nations.  The war is over now.  The re-building has begun even as “mopping up” operations continue in the more remote regions of permafrost and sea floor where the zombies still dwell.  He tells the big story through smaller stories in such authentic detail, in such believable language and clearly after conducting exhausting research on each subject’s area of expertise from fighter pilot to doctor to deep sea diver to Buddhist monk that I had to remind myself this was a work of fiction.  It is that compelling of a read.   

Many subjects are interviewed, each bringing an originality and richness to the tale as well a fresh angle on the war experience:  A Chinese doctor who first identified patient zero; a war profiteer manufacturer of a faux cure drug called “phalanx” now hiding in Antarctica; US soldiers who were involved in catastrophic early defeats at the Battle of Yonkers (where the soldiers are routed on live television) as well as  final victories in the North American clearing; a Mossad mastermind of the successful Israeli quarantine; a former Muslim radical astounded to see IDF soldiers in the Palestinian territories killing their own ultra-Orthodox countrymen violently resisting the re-locations; a Pakistani fighter pilot; a Cuban businessman (post-war Cuba is now a major capitalist power);  a Japanese civilian survivor; a French soldier who engaged in the particularly horrific fights in the Paris underground catacombs; a former US vice-president; a Russian infantryman; a South African white supremacist whose isolationist doctrine was mined for useful ideas in isolating the undead; a British politician marveling at the royals’ courage; a South Korean border soldier wondering what happened to all the North’s people—they just disappeared; an underwater soldier in his submersible who is still clearing the ocean depths of “Zack” (like “Charlie” “Haji” or “Jerry” in other wars) while lamenting the extinction of the whales; an Indian soldier turned  refugee remembering hero Genl. Raj Sing blowing mountain passes right out from under fleeing refugees; a US soldier of fortune now boozing it up in the Caribbean; a tough Canadian woman who gives her interview while casually decapitating remaining zombies frozen in the ground up to their chests and still reaching and moaning; even an Australian astronaut dying in a hospital from years of over-exposure to cosmic radiation while trapped in an orbiting space station when it all hit the fan, watching the war from several hundred miles up through his high-powered telescopes…and many more fascinating characters in places from all over the planet. 

So it goes.  One person after another.  Each with a story to tell.  Each with their take on the war, what it meant, how it changed them, who was at fault, who are villains and heroes, what lessons were learned and what now?

In an homage to both Terkel and the great horror film master George A. Romero, Max Brooks gives us a fascinating recounting of a Zombie War so convincing that, as I said, I had to remind myself it never really happened.   It was written as a follow-up to his 2003 The Zombie Survival Guide.  When it comes to imagination, it is clear  the creative apple doesn't fall far from the tree…although, unlike his lampooning father, the younger Brooks’ genius opts for the macabre route in examining the darker forces that shape our world.  But he also gives us glimpses of the best in us as it is a collection of those who survived the apocalypse and now are helping to rebuild the shattered world however they can.  In this way World War Z is a well-rounded study of the human race…even if it takes an army of the moaning undead to hold up the mirror to force us to look at ourselves.  (Assuming we’re not too busy running away...I mean, oh boy dem zombies was scary!)