The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.
Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of …
“The end was near.” —Voices from the Zombie War
The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.
Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail began with the twelve-year-old Patient Zero, to the unnamed northern forests where untold numbers sought a terrible and temporary refuge in the cold, to the United States of Southern Africa, where the Redeker Plan provided hope for humanity at an unspeakable price, to the west-of-the-Rockies redoubt where the North American tide finally started to turn, this invaluable chronicle reflects the full scope and duration of the Zombie War.
Most of all, the book captures with haunting immediacy the human dimension of this epochal event. Facing the often raw and vivid nature of these personal accounts requires a degree of courage on the part of the reader, but the effort is invaluable because, as Mr. Brooks says in his introduction, “By excluding the human factor, aren’t we risking the kind of personal detachment from history that may, heaven forbid, lead us one day to repeat it? And in the end, isn’t the human factor the only true difference between us and the enemy we now refer to as ‘the living dead’?”
Okej, Max, załapałam, jesteś DUŻYM FANEM izraela.
Pomysł jest naprawdę ciekawy, niektóre relacje czytało się świetnie. Problem taki, że jest bardzo wyczuwalne, że wszystkie te wypowiedzi pochodzą z jednej i tej samej głowy, właściwie nie czuć różnic. Autor stara się nadać postaciom jakieś cechy indywidualne, ale zazwyczaj po prostu wciska jakieś średnio mądre stereotypy dotyczące pochodzenia. Końcowe wypowiedzi brzmią jak zebrane urywki, które nigdy nie zostały skończone.
Właściwie nic wcześniej o zombie nie czytałam, tematykę lubię, więc tak czy siak przebrnęłam przez całość. Podoba mi się dość szczegółowe podejście do fizjonomii i funkcjonowania zombie. Może byłoby lepiej, gdyby taką książkę napisało wspólnie kilku autorów? Najlepiej takich, którzy nie gloryfikują niefajnych krajów.
Wow. Nothing like the movie and an intensely gripping read.
5 stars
This book tells the fictional story of the Zombie War in what looks like first hand accounts with interview questions, footnotes and information about the setting. Despite this unique structure it was a real page turner that I could barely put down once I started reading. It paints a very smart picture of the choices, desparation and outcomes such a scenario would produce. And: It has nothing to do with the movie. In fact, I was surprised how different the book was.
