The biological threat, whether as a predesigned attack or as an uncontrolled pandemic, continues to be a subject that, to be glimpsed with certain certainty and regret, sustains so many apocalyptic stories in literature or in the cinema.
But put into fiction, for a plot of this nature to stand out among many others, it must contribute something different, escape the typical infection - battle - extreme solution format.
In the case of this book Zone One, with its tendency towards the zombie genre, it achieves that point of terror with which to season the plot with that chill of fear. But also, in the reading surprises, mysteries, twists are predicted. A kind of black premonition accompanies us as we move through Manhattan with Mark Spitz and his brigade.
In extreme cases, the value of life is very relative. It all depends on whether you are infected or not. What it is about is to eradicate the evil that yearns to take over the entire species with the blow of bacteria. So far the typical thing in these stories of infections and the living dead.
Zone One is the epicenter, the defensive bulwark of evil, the mother cell of the pandemic protected by its zombies like stubborn ants. What can be hidden there is something that Spitz and his people could never have imagined.
And that is where the story surprises and fascinates, where you are grateful for having immersed yourself in one more zombie story that becomes a unique zombie story. The breaking point with so many previous novels and films has to do with a kind of double visualization of history. What happens on the streets of Manhattan and what the zombies, turned into symbols, can come to mean in a consumer society and largely deformed on principles and reality.
It may sound transcendent, but there is something of this sociological approach between the living dead and those who are in charge of making it disappear ...
You can now buy the book Zone One, the new novel by Colson Whitehead, here: