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book review

‘Zone One’ by Colson Whitehead

Despite its elegant writing, Colson Whitehead’s zombie fiction, hampered by a bland hero, fails to soar

By Molly Young

 |   

  October 14, 2011

“Zone One’’ by Colson Whitehead is a zombie novel set over the course of three days in a crumbling, futuristic version of Manhattan. A plague has swept the world and extinguished life from the island; only pockets of soldiers and the odd survivor remain to bear witness to the city’s final days. Those infected by the plague turn into one of two kinds of monster: catatonic souls (’’stragglers’’) who drift about in stages of advanced rot but pose no threat to humans, on the one hand, and traditional gore-oozing, flesh-eating zombies on the other.

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