Product Description

'It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.' So begins Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an expanded edition of the beloved Jane Austen novel featuring all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she's soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead. Can she vanquish the spawn of Satan? And overcome the social prejudices of the class-conscious landed gentry? Complete with romance, heartbreak, swordfights, cannibalism, and thousands of rotting corpses, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies transforms a masterpiece of world literature into something you'd actually want to read.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #90 in Books
• Published on: 2009-04-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781594743344
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Bookmarks Magazine
It’s difficult to tell if critics’ reactions to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies should be characterized as praise or astonishment. Some reviewers treated the book as a delightful gimmick. Others found that, beneath the surface, the book actually constituted an interesting way of looking at Austen’s novel. Zombies answer certain puzzling questions: Why were those troops stationed near Hertfordshire? Why did Charlotte Lucas actually marry Mr. Collins? (She had recently been bitten by zombies and wanted a husband who could be counted on to behead her—of course!) But critics also pointed out that this parody shows that Austen’s novel has remained so powerful over time that even the undead can’t spoil it.
Copyright 2009 Bookmarks Publishing LLC

From Booklist
This may be the most wacky by-product of the busy Jane Austen fan-fiction industry—at least among the spin-offs and pastiches that have made it into print. In what’s described as an “expanded edition” of Pride and Prejudice, 85 percent of the original text has been preserved but fused with  “ultraviolent zombie mayhem.” For more than 50 years, we learn, England has been overrun by zombies, prompting people like the Bennets to send their daughters away to China for training in the art of deadly combat, and prompting others, like Lady Catherine de Bourgh, to employ armies of ninjas. Added to the familiar plot turns that bring Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy together is the fact that both are highly skilled killers, gleefully slaying zombies on the way to their happy ending. Is nothing sacred? Well, no, and mash-ups using literary classics that are freely available on the Web may become a whole new genre. What’s next? Wuthering Heights and Werewolves? --Mary Ellen Quinn

About the Author
Seth Grahame-Smith once took a class in English literature. He lives in Los Angeles.

Jane Austen is the author of Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, Mansfield Park, and other masterpieces of English literature.

Customer Reviews

P&P Fan, LOVE This
The literary community should never be too proud to laugh at itself. I own three copies of the original "Pride & Prejudice" plus all the movies, so my husband and I bought this the moment we spotted it on the shelf (and laughed all the way to the register).

Fans need to read this book tongue-in-cheek and prepare to laugh WITH it. If you don't like zombies or consider yourself a Jane Austen purist, if you admire only the most intricate writing and consider this sort of work irreverent, then you'll be appalled more than amused. The level of writing IS degenerated from the original but, considering the subject matter, I don't think "quality" was the forethought of the day. "Brains" is more like it.

On a literary note, the juxtaposition of familiar classic and farcical horror makes for harmless, laugh-out-loud comedy. I applaud this idea and hope the "Quirk Classics" line hammers out more spoofs on stories I love.

The only thing I find annoying is the last line of the blurb: "transforms a masterpiece of world literature into something you'd actually want to read." I'm perfectly capable of enjoying BOTH, thankyouverymuch.

Clever concept, uneven execution
The combination of Jane Austen's classic and zombie horror seemed irresistible to me. However, the book is not as funny as it could have been. There are moments of macabre humor, such as the story of the maker of "fine burial gowns" who has lost most of his business because "few thought it worth the expense to dress the dead in finery when they would only soil it upon crawling out of their graves." Sadly, such moments are few and far between. The zombies add some creepy fun to the Regency proceedings, but the ninja/warrior princess element is just silly. Grahame-Norton makes some ill-advised and pointless additions to the dialogue between Elizabeth and Darcy which add nothing to the story and make their characters seem crude (and even mentally unbalanced in Elizabeth's case). Two-thirds of the way through, it seems the author loses steam, and much of the zombie action falls by the wayside. P & P & Zombies is mildly entertaining, but could have been more.

Ok, so I'm not the biggest Jane Austen fan, but...
... but...
1) It is an excellent mashup
2) It has freaking Zombies... I mean 'unmentionables'
3) I started reading it in the local store this afternoon and have wasted most of the afternoon reading it.
4) Did I mention the Zombies?

If you like 'Good Omens' you'll like this.
If you like 'Shaun of the Dead' you'll like this.
If you're literate you'll like this.
If you're a zombie you probably won't