Hello. I'm Catherine Weller and this is The Open Book.

This week's selection is World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks.

I'm going to let you in on a secret. Well, it's not much of a secret anymore, but i know a few of you haven't heard yet. Zombies are hot. Yep, the ghouls of George Romero have returned. Oh, there's always been a subculture of the army of the dead. But then Max Brook's first book, The Zombie Survival Manual, was published and you could hear people on trax trains talking about surviving zombie attacks. Then this March, months before its publication, Brad Pitt and Leonardo Di Caprio got into a bidding war for the film rights to World War Z.

World War Z is set sometime in the near future: ten years after China declared the zombie scourge eradicated. The zombie plague came close to wiping out humanity. It affected all continents of the world and all countries within them. China was the start of the outbreak. And it was the last country to declare victory in the battle against the undead.

Max Brooks relates the story by weaving together interviews of various men and women who lived through and fought the zombie wars. They came from all countries and all walks of life. Some were regular army, some were conscripts or volunteers, and some were just people on the street. The tales of these brave folks become a chronology of the war in which the reader follows the destruction wrought by the zombies and the learning process of the human beings who managed to escape being eaten by, and then becoming, one of the undead.

For that is the thing, we learn, about fighting an army of the undead. They can't be killed. They can't be frightened. There are no supply lines to disrupt. No civilian populations to demoralize. There are only moaning ghouls who increase their numbers by infecting humanity. And there is humanity itself: deceptive, bickering, sceptical, selfish humanity. It's a wonder the human race survived at all, what with the governmental cover ups, the corporate greed, the small scale nuclear war and the fact that one of the most essential human traits is also the most fragile: hope.

World WarZ is a strangely compelling novel. There are moments when reading this book that the reader pauses and realizes it's not just a parody. There's more to it than a dysutopian lampoon of Studs Terkel. The references to and speculations upon current events are quite intriguing. In addtion to that, this is a great read. The voices of the interviewed are unique and convincing. The unique vocabulary developed around fighting the war is partiuculary effective. And though it drags at first, the pacing is just right. I couldn't put World War Z down.

You've been listening to The Open Book on KCPW. I'm Catherine Weller.

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