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"If The Dead Hunger For A Man, And Do Not Endeavor To Conceal It, He Must Find It Out"

May 31, 2009
By .
Books

If you've never read Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, you've missed out.  Though the book has inspired centuries of romance novel dreck, it deserves its place as a classic of the English language.  The story of middle class Elizabeth Bennet's mutually reluctant courtship by upper class Fitzwilliam Darcy has almost everything one could want in a novel: comedies of error, manners, and misunderstanding; a keen appreciation of class; insight into human nature that holds up despite its age; and a happy ending.

But there are three great things that Pride and Prejudice lacks: endless hordes of the Living Dead; Hong Kong cinematic violence, whether unarmed, by swordplay, or with firearms; and a lengthy discussion of the relative merits of various schools of Asian martial arts.

Those defects are remedied by Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a newly published collaboration between Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith.  Oh, the key themes of Pride and Prejudice are all there, as is Austen's witty and insightful prose, but Grahame-Smith has endlessly improved the novel, by placing it in an alternate history Regency England in which the British isles are afflicted by a "strange plague" that causes the dead to walk, mindlessly hungering for the flesh of the living.  London is a walled city besieged by the dead, who are described as "zombies" by the lower classes, or "unmentionables" by the better sort of people.  Upper class Englishmen study kenjutsu in the salons of Kyoto, while the middle gentry hope to train their sons and daughters in kung fu at the Shao Lin temple.  The conflict between these schools, not to mention the conflict of society with the walking dead, is incorporated into the larger class conflicts so crucial to Austen's work.

And Austen's work it remains.  None of her prose, plot, or characters are removed.  Merely … rewritten slightly, with a few key scenes added.  It's as though Grahame-Smith was a literary historian, who'd found an early draft of this classic, from which brutal editors later removed its heart.

And devoured it.  I highly recommend Pride and Prejudice and Zombies to anyone.  Whether you're a fan of the work of Jane Austen, George A. Romero, John Woo, or Quentin Tarantino, there's something here for everyone.

Last 5 posts by Patrick Non-White

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3 Comments

  1. Grandy  •  May 31, 2009 @11:43 am

    Ok, so this was on the radar, but I had *no* idea it also involved martial arts. This radically changes everything, in a "let's combine the chocolate and peanut butter and see what happens!" kind of way.

  2. Martin  •  May 31, 2009 @6:24 pm

    It's also available on the Kindle. Which is great if you happen to be on a boat in The Exumas.

  3. Dawn  •  Jun 2, 2009 @12:12 pm

    I read this over the weekend. I love P&P and re-read it often. P&P&Z, for me, was a read-once and pass it on. Funny, but not worth re-reading. To be honest, some of the best bits were the drawings! Loved the one where Elizabeth lifts her skirt to "immodest levels" to kick one zombie apart. The subplot about Charlotte was an interesting twist (and I rather enjoyed the fact Mr Collins killed himself. I never liked him.) Really a good summer-on-the-beach read.