Max Brooks’ apocalyptic novel, World War Z, submerges the role of the individual into the realm of the state 
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Though it may share the same title, it is safe to say this <a href="http://www.worldwarzmovie.com/">fil</a><a href="http://www.worldwarzmovie.com/">m</a> has very little to do with the book. While the film is the story of a retired tough guy reluctantly leaving his family to save the world from a zombie outbreak, the <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/world_war_z.html?id=x4z-6_ujuk8c&amp;redir_esc=y">boo</a><a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/world_war_z.html?id=x4z-6_ujuk8c&amp;redir_esc=y">k</a> is very different. Set in a context which is ten years after the official end of the zombie war, named World War Z, Max Brooks’ alter ego presents an oral history &#8211; a series of hypnotic first-person accounts of how the outbreak first began, the ensuing panic that nearly drove humanity to its extinction, and how we eventually turned the tide and finally won the war. While the film creates suspense by withholding the ‘will he or won’t he’ plot device until the very end, the book, by contrast, gives news of our victory in the very beginning. So what remains of its suspense? The story of how it began, the cost, and all that happened in between. 
Despite being a book about zombies, WWZ possesses an unnerving ‘realism’, which critics did not fail to note when the book was first released (see for example <a href="http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/11/10/why_world_war_z_scares_me_and_not_in_the_good_way">here</a>, <a href="http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2007/10/mons-o25.html">here</a> and <a href="http://www.theeagleonline.com/scene/story/brooks-puts-brains-in-print-for-zombie-fanatics/">here</a>).  Unlike typical zombie fiction that tends to focus on small bands of survivors in a post-apocalyptic world, WWZ is penned on a global scale. The international scale of the catastrophe is conveyed all the more effectively through glimpses of suffering in various parts of the world, whether from Chile, Micronesia, Cuba, Iceland, South Africa and so on. In conveying the exploits of ordinary people from the world over, the narrative shifts from one character to another without warning. This ‘fog-of-war’ narrative forces the reader to collude in scrambling all the bits of information together, to figure out what happened and why, our imaginations left pondering about all the musty gaps in-between. Aside from encouraging the reader to assemble a history independent from various points of views, the only constants that reappear are countries and their governments. Ultimately, WWZ is as much about how the Chinese, American, South African, Israeli, and other governments cope, or fail to, as it is about how ordinary people react to the outbreak. In WWZ, the real ‘agents’ are not individuals, but governments. 
The central role that government has in the narrative is not surprising. In a story of how the human race got itself back on its feet, only governments have the necessary ‘sovereignty’, ‘legitimacy’, requisite power and resources at their disposal. Only governments can conceivably manage the resources to keep their populations ‘bred, fed and led’. Yet Brooks is careful not to present governments uncritically. When resources are stretched, WWZ does not portray governments recoiling in making ‘difficult’ decisions and expending the necessary ‘sacrifices’ to ensure their respective populations are suitably ‘husbanded’. 
Despite these patterns, governments are not uniform in managing the crisis. Critical to the book’s narrative are the divergent paths that governments take and the fortunes that they subsequently find themselves in. However, the geopolitics of the story does not merit much comment. Like typical counter-factual histories, WWZ’s geopolitics is a projection of today’s concerns into the future. Suffice it to say, this is a view from ‘liberal’ New York; Russia apparently reverts to its essence as an expansive theocratic state, the Middle East is encountered only through the Israel and Palestine conflict, Iran and Pakistan predictably destroy each other, and so on. The main narrative is America-centric, where the zombie crisis creates a new depression and America is forced to go back to New Deal economics. The book also exhibits the peculiarly American reverence towards their armed forces, as well as another amusing constant, the commentary towards the Bush administration in the aftermath of the Iraq debacle. Ultimately however, if you find the geopolitics plausible, you’ve probably been reading too much of the New York Times. 
By contrast, one of the most illuminating aspects in WWZ is its portrayal of our over-reliance on government to effectively manage our lives. All over the world, as the panic spreads, WWZ portrays the urban populations of advanced capitalist societies &#8211; overspecialised in ever-smaller niches, over-reliant on mainstream media, having delegated their protection and security to the state &#8211; at a complete and utter loss of how to cope. The only civilians who can handle themselves are those raised in tough neighbourhoods or former members of the armed forces. Populations paralysed in fear wait for their governments to help, wait to be told what to do, and complain when not properly organised or guided (p. 122). It seems that it takes only a major disaster to uncover the reality and extent of our lives as ‘<a href="http://thebodyinmodernity.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/docile-bodies-michel-foucault/">docile bodies</a><a href="http://thebodyinmodernity.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/docile-bodies-michel-foucault/">’</a>; the majority are unprepared &#8211; and possibly even incapable &#8211; of dealing with major catastrophes, and are at the mercy of government bureaucracy. 
It is no coincidence that when Brooks imagines how America rebuilds itself after the zombie outbreak, his alter ego interviews several people including a New Deal administrator, the former vice president of America, a volunteer to the state-organised neighbourhood watch, a film director who produces state-funded propaganda, and, naturally, soldiers. With the book hinting that America’s efforts to rebuild are mirrored by governments across the world, what is striking is that even in a country typically considered as the most individualistic, all of the characters interviewed happen to be either part of the state administration or somehow associated with it. In doing so, WWZ reveals the extent to which the modern age cannot even conceive of the individual except in relation to the state. 
Just like our fictional counterparts in WWZ, our lives – the audience &#8211; have become utterly dependent on government. The government tells us what to do, provides jobs for us, keeps us secure, and without it we can scarcely conceive how to live. In the real world it seems we can only react, incapable of controlling the conflagration of factors and forces constantly besetting our lives. We seem not only to be at the mercy of natural forces, but also market forces, health scares and pandemics, forces that can only be controlled, if at all, at the nation-state or international level. If we wish to create effective change, we are unable to do so as individuals or small associations, and even then our efforts are only conferred ‘legitimacy’ after appropriate state legal recognition. It is no small irony that in WWZ, the one with almost limitless power is not a general, or even a president &#8211; it is an unelected government bureaucrat. It seems then, part of what makes WWZ so realistic, is the uncomfortable truth that in the modern world, the individual cannot be conceived without an umbilical cord from his navel to the state. 
World War Z by Max Brooks (Duckworth Overlook Press: 2006). Page references are to the 2013 edition.
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World War Z: The State as Saviour

The upcoming film release of Life of Pi is a visual celebration of the book, but there is much to be taken from the spiritual message of the original narrative 
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Contemporary literature only rarely tackles life&#8217;s ultimate meaning. It seems the challenge is now different; how to live without it? Any book that speaks to the contrary, and lionised for its success as well as its resonance, is a book worthy of interest. Life of Pi by Yann Martel is one such book. Winner of the 2002 Man Booker Prize, it is now the subject of a forthcoming film. So before Hollywood could ruin it for me, I decided finally to read it. Promising to convince you of God, its claims, as well as success, are surprising. And how? By telling a story, both fantastic and learned, of a young Indian boy called Pi who survives a ship wreck for 227 days across the Pacific until he reaches Mexico, with only a 450-pound Bengal tiger for company. 
After reading this you will never look at the sea, zoos and tigers the same again. Martel patiently aggregates detail upon detail until the Pacific is alive, becoming a character in and of itself. Every page is brim full of zoological lore and the tiger is rendered so authentically; one begins to wonder how the author did his research. And yet for all this texture, the style is deliciously limpid. Interestingly, despite being written in the first person, as readers we are not consumed by Pi. Barred from his interior, as listeners we are hooked, perpetually ruminating on how it will convince us of God. 
The story is split it into three parts and the argument is deceptively simple. Part 1: Pi believes in and loves God. The truth of any one religion is not important. God&#8217;s ultimate reality is more real than any one religion and they can serve to obscure him. And lest you think otherwise, animals are not cuddly. Part 2: Pi survives the shipwreck and lands in Mexico. Just him and the tiger. It was a difficult journey. Part 3: When Pi attempts to make others believe him, they find they can&#8217;t. Impossible, they say, according to reason it is unbelievable. So instead he tells them a story that is rationally plausible. Which one are we to believe? The ship sank, Pi survived. Nothing else is factually verifiable. How does one choose? According to Pi &#8211; which story tells a better story? “And so it is with God”. 
But let’s not misrepresent this &#8211; the book is not an argument. While Life of Pi is a vivid and at times gripping story, it is also something more profound. It is a sincere meditation on religion, on the very meaning of faith, and the meaning of God. It is an attempt to make sense of how to salvage the multiple truth narratives that our past has left us, and how to reconcile them with the narrative told by reason. According to this book, the past is unknown having left behind only traces. The rational story constructs a narrative from these traces alone. Religions, on the other hand, are the stories we told ourselves on the way here. Of these two, neither narrative excludes the other. Religions are &#8216;better&#8217;, in the sense that they give meaning, of how we got here and why. Ultimately then, it&#8217;s not the truth of religion that is important, it is the meaning faith gives to life. 
Although sincere, this meditation is so characteristically modern. Only our age could separate &#8216;truth&#8217; from &#8216;meaning&#8217;, and only a modern mentality could regard truth irrelevant or be embarrassed by it. The majority of the faithful in the past, and I dare say, the majority of the faithful now, could not imagine doing so &#8211; it would be incomprehensible. Unpalatable as it may be, I suspect that the majority of the faithful, then and now, do not find religions meaningful yet distinct from the truth; they find religion meaningful precisely because they believe them to be true. While they could intellectually understand how religions can give a meaning to life, how hard would they struggle for a meaning of their own choosing? If the end of their strivings were not &#8216;true&#8217;, at least to them, then for what ends did they struggle? What drove the mystic to lacerate himself, the pilgrim to traverse immense distances, and let’s not be cuddly about this, the warrior who fights and martyrs himself? Was it only because religion told a better story, and made life &#8216;seem&#8217; more meaningful? And us pondering at the labours of the past, without talk of &#8216;truth&#8217; &#8211; are we not left in the dark about their actions? 
Clearly then, in rendering the majority of the faithful incomprehensible, this book tells us more about our age than the faith it struggles with. In the end, it is further proof of our age’s growing inability to conceive of faith or to understand its people.
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Faheem Hussain