Zone One

Colson Whitehead has won the Whiting Writers' Award and received a MacArthur Fellowship. His previous novels have been both critical and popular successes in the literary market, but he has said in interviews that he was not going slumming when he decided to write a zombie novel. He grew up loving science fiction and horror and wanted to put his own mark on the field. He doesn't do that by writing the most innovative zombie novel ever. Zone One covers all the predictable plot points of the genre – the first night, the shifting band of survivor, and the inevitable breakdown of defenses. What Whitehead brings to the enterprise is his story-telling craft and richness of language, both of which he deploys in ways that keep them almost invisible to the reader. Zone One is the best-written zombie novel I have ever read, for whatever that is worth.