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Zone One

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Zone One

By: Colson Whitehead
Narrated by: Beresford Bennett
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A pandemic has devastated the planet, sorting humanity into two types: the uninfected and the infected, the living and the living dead. The worst of the plague is now past, and Manhattan is slowly being resettled. Armed forces have successfully reclaimed the island south of Canal Street – aka ‘Zone One’ and teams of civilian volunteers are clearing out the remaining infected ‘stragglers’.

Mark Spitz is a member of one of these taskforces and over three surreal days he undertakes the mundane mission of malfunctioning zombie removal, the rigours of Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder, and attempting to come to terms with a fallen world.

But then things start to go terribly wrong…

 Dark Humour Fiction Genre Fiction Horror Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction Urban Scary New York Adventure Zombie
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Critic Reviews

When I finished reading this exhilarating, heartbreaking book, I realised that, in fact, I'd just read one of the best literary novels of the year (Stuart Kelly)
Profoundly thoughtful... Zone One is a dark mirror, to be sure, but there is no doubt it is our own age that is being scrutinised here
Punchy cocktail of horror, comedy and social critique
A dark futuristic satire laced with fiendish humour
Often simultaneously arch and sombre, Whitehead's narrative flares with a sociological intelligence (Benjamin Evans)
What Whitehead does really well is anchor his apocalypse in the small, heartbreaking details of everyday humanity, giving his end-of-days a bleak, sad humour that is all its own (Alison Flood)
The zombie sub-genre is all the rage, but Zone One elevates the popular trope with its harrowing tale of life, loss and hope in a post-zombie apocalypse Manhattan. As satirical and gut-wrenchingly emotional as it is horrific, Zone One is the zombie tale at its literary best
It's tense, suspenseful and terrifying... Yet, he's also very funny at times and anyone who has ever had dealings with a HR department will appreciate his asides at the zombies in personnel (Ann Marie Stanton)
Whitehead's witty spin on the zombie apocalypse is an enjoyable read and is highly recommended
It's monochromatically unsettling and blackly comic, as any zombie-related fiction should be. It's also one of the most gut-wrenchingly emotional reads of the year, with tragedy complex and inevitable enough to be Shakespearian... the tension is through the roof. The humour is perfectly pitched... He uses the entire situation to skewer and satirise... But where Zone One truly flourishes is in its depiction of the heartbreaking loss; loss of the chance to be simply mundane, loss of a perfectly formed stronghold and the relationships built up within. At moments like these, the book is quite startlingly, heartbreakingly beautiful, regardless of the subject matter... Whitehead's prose is engrossing, simultaneously verbose and casual enough to stroll off the page and shake your hand... even George A Romero would have to marvel at Zone One... what'll be more interesting is whether Whitehead will ever write anything as astounding as this again (Gareth Hughes)
All stars
Most relevant
Wonderful turns of phrase, metaphor and descriptions of affect. True literary merit. Surprising to find it in a zombie vehicle.

The guy can write

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I want to hear a story, not listen to a guy milking his English literature degree.

I'm a simple man

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The narrator’s tone and inflection seems completely divorced from the content of the story. As a result, it is very hard to become immersed in the narrative.

Good story - terrible narration

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I have given up half way through the book. Nothing has happened yet, it is like every single paragraph is a blurb, with overly flowery prose being empty of story.

Not for me

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I just can't even, I'm 3 hours in and I've got no idea what's going on and the narrator cannot tell a story.
Seriously, I tried. But it's so painful.

Painful narration

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