Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

When I was at school my English teacher said, "We could read something by Jane Austen but it is all boring so we won't." and we read A clockwork Orange instead. 12 years later and someone has finally remedied the problem by introducing crazy zombie (and ninja!) action into the Austen classic. The stories spine is still the same, but now it has been grabbed and pulled out by the walking dead and the main characters are marsal artist heroes. The added kung fu/ninja/zombie action usually fits quite well into the story and you do start to worry that the zombie apocalypse will stop the menfolk returning from London.show more

It's been a massive internet sensation. Indeed, you only need to hear the title once to know that this book was made for the online generation. Seth Grahame-Smith's <a href="/book/9781594743344/Pride-and-Prejudice-and-Zombies">Pride and Prejudice and Zombies</a> is the first book to take a popular musical form (the mash-up, "a song or composition created by blending two or more songs, usually by overlaying the vocal track of one song seamlessly over the music track of another") and apply its methodology to the novel. So, here we have, as the subtitle explains, Austen's classic Regency romance, but now with added ultraviolent zombie action. It is bonkers, of course, but also quite, quite brilliant! And with a film on the way (to be directed by <em>Donnie Darko</em>'s Richard Kelly) it is only likely to get ever-more popular.<br /><br /> <a href="/book/9781594743344/Pride-and-Prejudice-and- Zombies">Pride and Prejudice and Zombies</a> starts by radically altering Austen's famous opener: "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains." It's a little clunky, for sure, but it brilliantly sets the tone for the rest of the book. We have a lot of Austen's own words here (more than 80 per cent of the text is Austen's) and then Grahame-Smith shoves in the blood, the bone-crunching and the gore (some of which, it has to be said, is very gory indeed). Our heroes are still Elizabeth Bennett and her beau Mr Darcy, but this time out they are all about the cadavers rather than the courting!<br /><br /> The book is beautifully presented with disconcerting line drawings of the zombie action in the style of CE Brook (Austen's original illustrator). Whilst it is obviously just silly fun, Grahame-Smith's version of Austen's classic works so well because it taps into the caustic, biting wit that so many forget is Austen's best weapon. Even in the original, it is left unexplained why the militia is camped near Meryton. Perhaps they were protecting the town from something awful and unspeakably evil. Something undead that has now, at last, crawled from the subtext into the clear light of day!show more