Zone One

It's its own universe.

I mean, you and I were talking a little bit about Colson Whitehead's Zone One before we came out tonight, and how many of you have read Colson's zombie novel? Okay, so you know what I'm talking about.

It's that atmosphere, and that you are in a world that's familiar enough, right? I knew I was in New York, and yeah, may I not be around for this version of New York unless I'm reading it in the page.

I'm not sure I want to live to be 300 years old, but...

Which is deeply realistic and devastating.

But he also wrote the highly acclaimed zombie story Zone One.

Right.

And with The Underground Railroad, he applies that speculative genre-bending skill to one of the darkest periods in American history.

Well, The Intuitionist, my first book, takes place in an alternative New York, alternative 20th century.

I have a zombie novel called Zone One.

It's a zombie apocalypse novel.

And that's a kind of utopian New York because everyone is dead.

Um, we've name-checked Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, one of the great contemporary post-apocalyptic stories about art and survival.

Um, Zone One by Colson Whitehead, there are zombies in that one, but the zombies are kind of secondary to what else is going on.

[laughs]

Yes.