Zone One: A Novel

by Colson Whitehead Narrated by Beresford Bennett

Overview

In this wry take on the post-apocalyptic horror novel, a pandemic has devastated the planet. The plague has sorted humanity into two types: the uninfected and the infected, the living and the living dead.

Now the plague is receding, and Americans are busy rebuild­ing civilization under orders from the provisional govern­ment based in Buffalo. Their top mission: the resettlement of Manhattan. Armed forces have successfully reclaimed the island south of Canal Street-aka Zone One-but pockets of plague-ridden squatters remain. While the army has eliminated the most dangerous of the infected, teams of civilian volunteers are tasked with clearing out a more innocuous variety-the "malfunctioning" stragglers, who exist in a catatonic state, transfixed by their former lives.

Mark Spitz is a member of one of the civilian teams work­ing in lower Manhattan. Alternating between flashbacks of Spitz's desperate fight for survival during the worst of the outbreak and his present narrative, the novel unfolds over three surreal days, as it depicts the mundane mission of straggler removal, the rigors of Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder, and the impossible job of coming to grips with the fallen world.

And then things start to go wrong.

Both spine chilling and playfully cerebral, Zone One bril­liantly subverts the genre's conventions and deconstructs the zombie myth for the twenty-first century.

Editorial Reviews

DECEMBER 2011 - AudioFile

In a novel being hailed as the “thinking person’s zombie novel,” Mark Spitz patrols Zone One of post-apocalyptic Manhattan, searching for skels (zombies) of both varieties—the violent and the catatonic. He’s part of a patrol responsible for clearing the way for surviving humans to return. Narrator Beresford Bennett delivers Spitz’s account of events as the character’s memory is inspired by found relics. Bennett adopts the existential mood of this novel as Spitz examines the evidence of the former city with deliberate, unsensationalized observations. Bennett’s subtly ironic tone controls the narrow range of emotion that reflects the monotony of life on patrol in a civilization that is no longer. J.E.M. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2011 - AudioFile

In a novel being hailed as the “thinking person’s zombie novel,” Mark Spitz patrols Zone One of post-apocalyptic Manhattan, searching for skels (zombies) of both varieties—the violent and the catatonic. He’s part of a patrol responsible for clearing the way for surviving humans to return. Narrator Beresford Bennett delivers Spitz’s account of events as the character’s memory is inspired by found relics. Bennett adopts the existential mood of this novel as Spitz examines the evidence of the former city with deliberate, unsensationalized observations. Bennett’s subtly ironic tone controls the narrow range of emotion that reflects the monotony of life on patrol in a civilization that is no longer. J.E.M. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169349313
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	10/18/2011
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	945,645

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