Cover of World War Z

World War Z

An Oral History of the Zombie War

  • 2006 first published
  • 422 pages
  • ★ 3.9 (139 ratings)
  • 46 editions

Max Brooks's World War Z (2006) is a horror novel. Readers will find themes of zombies, war, imaginary wars and battles and oral history.

Open Library readers give it an average of 3.9 out of 5 from 139 ratings, and 527 more have it on their want-to-read list. It has been published in 46 editions across 8 languages.

At about 422 pages, most readers finish it in 7–8 hours.

About World War Z

“The end was near.” —Voices from the Zombie War The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years. Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail began with the twelve-year-old Patient Zero, to the unnamed northern forests where untold numbers sought a terrible and temporary refuge in the cold, to the United States of Southern Africa, where the Redeker Plan provided hope for humanity at an unspeakable price, to the west-of-the-Rockies redoubt where the North American tide finally started to turn, this invaluable chronicle reflects the full scope and duration of the Zombie War. Most of all, the book captures with haunting immediacy the human dimension of this epochal event.
Description from Open Library

Themes, setting & tropes

Genres

Subjects

  • Humor
  • Zombies
  • War
  • Imaginary wars and battles
  • Horror tales
  • Oral history
  • War stories
  • War correspondents
  • Epidemics
  • Survival
  • Horror fiction
  • Romans, nouvelles
  • Habiletés de survie
  • Correspondants de guerre
  • Guerres et batailles imaginaires
  • Guerras imaginarias

Quick answers

Who wrote World War Z?

World War Z was written by Max Brooks and first published in 2006.

What genre is World War Z?

It is usually shelved as Horror.

How long is World War Z?

The median edition has 422 pages, about 7–8 hours of reading at 250 words per minute.

What books are similar to World War Z?

Readers who like it often enjoy Cell, Insomnia and Coraline.

More by Max Brooks

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