Another Book Review: World War Z

World War Z, by Max Brooks, describes what might happen if a virus got loose and caused a world-wide pandemic of re-animated people, i.e., zombies. It is cleverly told through a series of interviews with various survivors around the world about their experience with or rather against the zombie hoards and how they managed to emerge from the plague uninfected. A nice touch is how Brooks adds in “footnotes” which explain details of the subject’s narrative – what a certain acronym means, what a piece of equipment did, etc. Furthermore, Brooks effectively gives distinct voices to each of his “interviewees,” not an easy thing to do, especially given the number of subjects in the book. World War Z manages, for its outlandish premise, to convey an impression of veritas through very readable, creative, yet plausible story-telling. Towards the end, I must confess, I was looking forward to finishing Z but that was probably more a function of my impatience to start another book, than any defect in the narrative.