Zone One
Colson Whitehead
From the author of the Man Booker longlisted The Underground Railroad
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…
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About Colson Whitehead
Reviews for Zone One
The Times
Exhilarating, heartbreaking
Stuart Kelly
Scotland on Sunday
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
New Statesman
A zombie story with brains... Whitehead can spin gore into macabre poetry
Washington Post
As satirical and gut-wrenchingly emotional as it is horrific, Zone One is the zombie tale at its literary best
SciFi Now
A cool, thoughtful and, for all its ludic violence, strangely tender novel
New York Times Book Review
Punchy cocktail of horror, comedy and social critique
Metro
Often simultaneously arch and sombre, Whitehead's narrative flares with a sociological intelligence
Benjamin Evans
Daily Telegraph