Scan barcode
A review by corncake
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks
Did not finish book. Stopped at 35%.
I started reading this “zombie” novel for a book club, and I really tried to read it, I did, but could not finish this book. Although the interview layout is an interesting concept, I personally found it boring here.
The people who were being interviewed all had the same exact voice, so when a new chapter started with a brand new interviewee, it would be another boring male character (and so often a stereotype) presented as a horrible human being. After a while, that was very exhausting to keep reading.
What really halted my continuation of this reading was the Israel/Palestine chapter. I have tried to look at this section of the book from all angles, and even angrily wrote in this review before an edit that the chapter felt like Zionist propaganda before taking a breath and writing down my thoughts better. In the chapter a young Palestinian character (our stereotyped male interviewee for this section) wants the destruction and death of Jews from the zombie apocalypse because of everything that Israel has done, while the Israeli leaders are the ones who want peace with Palestine and to shelter everyone. This just felt uncomfortable reading as the genocide of thousands of Palestinian people has been happening for months IRL as I write this review. I understand this book was written before the major ethnic-cleansing of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, but the conflict between Israel and Palestine has been going on for a long time, and it just feels as if the author was not condemning Israel and portraying their leaders as the "good guys," because they would never want any harm to actually befall the Palestinians. It’s the young, influential Palestinian folks who misunderstand the conflict and don't believe peace is an option. Hmmmmmmm... So for me, this chapter did not age very well, and thus I decided to stop reading.
Personally, I do not recommend reading this book. There are way better novels to spend your free time with.
The people who were being interviewed all had the same exact voice, so when a new chapter started with a brand new interviewee, it would be another boring male character (and so often a stereotype) presented as a horrible human being. After a while, that was very exhausting to keep reading.
What really halted my continuation of this reading was the Israel/Palestine chapter. I have tried to look at this section of the book from all angles, and even angrily wrote in this review before an edit that the chapter felt like Zionist propaganda before taking a breath and writing down my thoughts better. In the chapter a young Palestinian character (our stereotyped male interviewee for this section) wants the destruction and death of Jews from the zombie apocalypse because of everything that Israel has done, while the Israeli leaders are the ones who want peace with Palestine and to shelter everyone. This just felt uncomfortable reading as the genocide of thousands of Palestinian people has been happening for months IRL as I write this review. I understand this book was written before the major ethnic-cleansing of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, but the conflict between Israel and Palestine has been going on for a long time, and it just feels as if the author was not condemning Israel and portraying their leaders as the "good guys," because they would never want any harm to actually befall the Palestinians. It’s the young, influential Palestinian folks who misunderstand the conflict and don't believe peace is an option. Hmmmmmmm... So for me, this chapter did not age very well, and thus I decided to stop reading.
Personally, I do not recommend reading this book. There are way better novels to spend your free time with.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racism