World War Z

I do not like zombies. There you go, I said it. All the zombie fans can come and attack me in the zombie style but I do not care. I belong to the vampire club. To my great surprise, one fine day I picked up a zombie book to read. What can I do ? I had no other book within my reach and I was itching to read a book. This is how history was made, Soumya reading a zombie book.

World War Z is written by Max Brooks and is now made into a major motion picture starring Brad Pitt. This book is the oral history of the global zombie war. A series of oral interviews are compiled by the narrator who is an agent of the United Nations Postwar Commission. The book starts with how zombies were first found in China and how the epidemic spread to the rest of the world. It ends with the description of the socio-economic & political situation after the war.

                   

 The humans go to war with the zombies. Zombies are living corpses which feed on fresh human flesh. Max Brooks writes about having to deal with a new kind of an enemy, who is fearless, ruthless and emotionless. All the military strategies are based on striking fear in the enemy but this particular enemy cannot be stunned. The strategies had to be revised. For example, the military is trained to shoot in the upper part of the body. This strategy does not work for the living corpses; they have to be shot in the head to be killed. Military personnel had to be trained, to instinctively shoot the zombie in the head. Another strategy was to use humans as the bait to trap the zombies and kill them. These were a few strategies that were thought by the humans to win the World War Z. The military also came up with new weapons to kill the zombies.

After war Cuba becomes the super power, whereas America still needs to catch up with Cuba to get the super power title. The reversal of the superpower status was an interesting concept and it brought a smile to my face.  

The writing style of Max Brooks got me hooked to the book until I completed 70 % of the book. It is through progression of interviews that the reader comes to know about the zombie epidemic and the wars in different parts of the world. I got goose bumps when I read about the invincible enemy and the way zombies attacked and devoured the humans. I really loved the way the author analyzed the socio-political and economic angles of the zombie menace.  As I reached the end, I skipped through the pages, because I was bored reading about too many zombie killing strategies and political details of different countries.

Max Brooks writes as though this fictional history took place. It was so unreal, yet so real. This book is a survival guide if we were to be attacked by the zombies. All the zombie fans out there must have already read it. For all those, who belong to the vampire or the werewolf clubs, zombies are interesting as well. This book is a good zombie book. Do not blame me, if you feel like changing clubs after reading the book. 

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