Zone One

Colson Whitehead is the author of four previous novels, The Intuitionist, John Henry Days, Apex Hides the Hurt and Sag Harbor, as well as The Colossus of New York, a collection of essays. He is the recipient of numerous awards and has frequently hit the American bestseller lists. He lives in New York. Web: www.colsonwhitehead.com Twitter: @colsonwhitehead

"It's tense, suspenseful and terrifying... Yet, he's also very funny at times and anyone who has ever had dealings with a HR department will appreciate his asides at the zombies in personnel" -- Ann Marie Stanton Irish Independent "It's monochromatically unsettling and blackly comic, as any zombie-related fiction should be. It's also one of the most gut-wrenchingly emotional reads of the year, with tragedy complex and inevitable enough to be Shakespearian... the tension is through the roof. The humour is perfectly pitched... He uses the entire situation to skewer and satirise... But where Zone One truly flourishes is in its depiction of the heartbreaking loss; loss of the chance to be simply mundane, loss of a perfectly formed stronghold and the relationships built up within. At moments like these, the book is quite startlingly, heartbreakingly beautiful, regardless of the subject matter... Whitehead's prose is engrossing, simultaneously verbose and casual enough to stroll off the page and shake your hand... even George A Romero would have to marvel at Zone One... what'll be more interesting is whether Whitehead will ever write anything as astounding as this again" -- Gareth Hughes SciFi Now "What Whitehead does really well is anchor his apocalypse in the small, heartbreaking details of everyday humanity, giving his end-of-days a bleak, sad humour that is all its own" -- Alison Flood Sunday Times