Max Brooks is known today as one of the best fiction writers and his attention to detail makes his novels a masterpiece. World War Z is probably one of his best-known novels and this is because the novel was adapted into a very popular film starring Brad Pitt.
The novel starts with a prologue in which the purpose of the writing is revealed. According to the narrator, the world is not in the post-pandemic stage and the spread of the virus which turns humans into zombies is contained. Still, the narrator and the governmental forces want to create a document to write down all the events and to make sure something similar will never take place again.
From the beginning of the novel, the government is harshly criticized for trying to cover up what really happened. The original report was highly redacted to make sure it does not put the government in a bad light and that the politicians will not be affected by it. This tendency to cover up the truth also appears in the first chapter where the narrator interviews a Chinese doctor named Kwang Jing-shu who was among the first to discover the virus and to come into contact with the person who was then called Patient Zero. Kwang is shocked to learn that Patient Zero was not the first one to be infected and also to be imprisoned for his attempt to reveal the truth to the general public. This initial presentation has the purpose of alluding to the idea that the governments are the ones to blame for letting things get out of control namely because they refused to admit there was a problem in the first place.
The virus spreads quickly all over the world and at first, the countries do not understand the gravity of the situation. Those who reported seeing zombies were demeaned and accused of making up stories or even suffering from mental illnesses. This proves that for the governments, their priority was saving their own reputation and not the general population.
The first country to go on the defense and to try to control the situation in Israel. Even though they were mocked by the other countries, their efforts quickly paid off. In other countries, however, including in the United States, the situation quickly got out of hand. The political leaders in America ignored the warnings and punished all those who claimed there was a problem in the first place. Instead, they tried to make a profit out of the situation and come out with vaccines for the general population which in reality did not work at all.
In "The Great Panic" the narrator describes how the entire world was quickly overtaken by the zombies. During this time, the population resorted to committing suicide and even killing their own children just to stop them from being infected. The political instability ended up causing a nuclear between Iran and Pakistan, causing even more troubles worldwide.
Worldwide, the countries tried to take an armed stand against the zombies but they quickly found that some of their weapons were not effective against those infected and that each individual zombie had to be shot in the head in order to be eliminated. This chapter presents the way in which the countries were unprepared to protect themselves and this is linked with their refusal to accept the presence of a problem in the first place.
Safe zones are created all over the world to protect those who were not infected. Unfortunately, those zones were not big enough to house everyone, and as such many people were left out, making it an extremely unpopular and criticized plan. The ways in which the zombie pandemic was fought were extremely cruel and resulted in many civilian deaths. Eventually, an all-out war was declared against the zombies and every country joined in. The message here is clear: only by remaining united can the human race survive and thrive.
The novel ends optimistically, the characters being sure that society will be able to jump right back and recuperate. This event is also seen as an extremely important one because even though many lives were lost, humanity is now better prepared to deal with a world pandemic or with an extreme crisis affecting everyone.
