World War Z by Max Brooks (2007)

[El Dingo]

World War Z - Amazon

Someone had given this book to Dee Dee a while back. I was going on a short camping trip to make sure our equipment was in working order so I grabbed it off the shelf. I heard a movie was in the works and I love saying 'the book was better'.

The book is definite 'junk food', lots of action, short chapters and hard to stop reading. It's also intelligently written.

The premise is standard zombie origin fare. Mysterious plague revives the dead who then crave living flesh. The twist is how the writer envisions each country handling the outbreak. Instead of a single narrative he presents the scenario as a collection of interviews conducted by a war journalist.

The journalist interviews civilians and military personnel around the globe. Each person telling how they survived and how those around them did not. Some are crazy, some suicidal, some are sad but most are just physically and emotionally scarred from the things they saw or did.

It's a sobering, scary book. I had trouble sleeping all alone in my tent those two nights.