Audiobook
English language
Published Oct. 18, 2011 by Random House Audio.
n this wry take on the post-apocalyptic horror novel, a pandemic has devastated the planet. The plague has sorted humanity into two types: the uninfected and the infected, the living and the living dead.
Now the plague is receding, and Americans are busy rebuilding civilization under orders from the provisional government based in Buffalo. Their top mission: the resettlement of Manhattan. Armed forces have successfully reclaimed the island south of Canal Street - aka Zone One - but pockets of plague-ridden squatters remain. While the army has eliminated the most dangerous of the infected, teams of civilian volunteers are tasked with clearing out a more innocuous variety - the “malfunctioning” stragglers, who exist in a catatonic state, transfixed by their former lives.
Mark Spitz is a member of one of the civilian teams working in lower Manhattan. Alternating between flashbacks of Spitz’s desperate fight for survival during the worst of …
n this wry take on the post-apocalyptic horror novel, a pandemic has devastated the planet. The plague has sorted humanity into two types: the uninfected and the infected, the living and the living dead.
Now the plague is receding, and Americans are busy rebuilding civilization under orders from the provisional government based in Buffalo. Their top mission: the resettlement of Manhattan. Armed forces have successfully reclaimed the island south of Canal Street - aka Zone One - but pockets of plague-ridden squatters remain. While the army has eliminated the most dangerous of the infected, teams of civilian volunteers are tasked with clearing out a more innocuous variety - the “malfunctioning” stragglers, who exist in a catatonic state, transfixed by their former lives.
Mark Spitz is a member of one of the civilian teams working in lower Manhattan. Alternating between flashbacks of Spitz’s desperate fight for survival during the worst of the outbreak and his present narrative, the novel unfolds over three surreal days, as it depicts the mundane mission of straggler removal, the rigors of Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder, and the impossible job of coming to grips with the fallen world.
And then things start to go wrong.
Both spine chilling and playfully cerebral, Zone One brilliantly subverts the genre’s conventions and deconstructs the zombie myth for the twenty-first century.
Zombies, maar dan literair. Whitehead kan echt goed schrijven, maar zijn beschouwende stijl past toch niet helemaal bij postapocalyptische zombies. Ook een tikje te somber voor me, niet helemaal waar ik op dit moment behoefte aan heb eigenlijk.
(Read in 2023) Enjoyable, zombified take on New York. Great writing, as usual, and it explores many topics and themes such as work, relationships, consumerism, gentrification, and storytelling/self-mythology.
A well-written zombie apocalypse novel that is almost perfectly-crafted, but also kind of unmemorable, with few original things to add to the genre. It ends so abruptly and with so many plot points left unresolved that I had to look up whether there was a sequel. Also, and maybe this is just me, but like so many stories in this genre, I found it very depressing overall. The author seems to work hard to construct an utterly gray and hopeless world and make you feel that nothing will ever be redeemed. It was a very compelling airplane read, and I stayed up late to finish it, but the ending left me feeling very deflated.
