Books like World War Z
What should you read after Max Brooks’s novel? It depends on what you loved most about it.
- Max Brooks
- 2006
- Apocalyptic fiction
What did you love about it?
Choosing one reorders everything below.
Best books to read after World War Z
Ranked overall. Pick what you loved above to re-rank them.
Best overall matchThe Stand
Stephen King
The other great American plague epic, and the one Brooks grew up on. Where he gives you a hundred voices for a page each, King gives you a dozen for a thousand.
- The logistics of a collapse
- Global scope, dozens of countries
- No single protagonist
- 1,100 pages, single narrative
Great matchThe Walking Dead: Compendium One
Robert Kirkman
The same commitment to playing the premise absolutely straight, with survivors who are the real problem. Forty-eight issues in one brick.
- Zombies played completely straight
- The logistics of a collapse
- Comics, not prose
Best for the aftermathZone One
Colson Whitehead
The clean-up crew: a man sweeping lower Manhattan for stragglers, thinking about his old life. Brooks's reconstruction phase, written by a literary novelist.
- Told entirely in retrospect
- The logistics of a collapse
- Satire of governments and armies
- Almost nothing happens
Best for the science of itI Am Legend
Richard Matheson
One man, one house, and a rigorous attempt to work out what the infection actually is. The grandfather of every book on this list, and under 200 pages.
- Zombies played completely straight
- Short self-contained chapters
- A single character throughout
Great matchThe War of the Worlds
H.G. Wells
An eyewitness account of a civilisation collapsing in weeks, written as reportage by a man walking through the wreckage. The format Brooks is descended from.
- Told entirely in retrospect
- The logistics of a collapse
- Global scope, dozens of countries
- Victorian prose throughout
Great matchThe Girl with All the Gifts
M.R. Carey
Takes the biology seriously — a fungal infection with a real life cycle — and then asks what we owe the thing that replaces us.
- Zombies played completely straight
- The logistics of a collapse
- Small cast, close focus
Worth a look — with a warning14
Peter Clines
Not an outbreak novel at all, but the same pleasure: ordinary people methodically working out what is going on, one clue at a time.
- Short self-contained chapters
- The logistics of a collapse
- Turns into cosmic horror
Best for the scale of the outbreakThe Passage
Justin Cronin
A viral apocalypse with military origins, told across a century and a continent. It has the scope you came for and gives you characters to follow through it.
- The logistics of a collapse
- Global scope, dozens of countries
- Zombies played completely straight
- Trilogy, over 2,000 pages total
Worth a look — with a warningFeed
M.T. Anderson
Satire of a society that cannot stop consuming, told in the corrupted language of its own advertising. Brooks's political streak, aimed at consumers rather than governments.
- Satire of governments and armies
- No single protagonist
- No apocalypse, no zombies
Best for the procedural detailThe Andromeda Strain
Michael Crichton
A team in an underground lab racing an organism, told with documents, transcripts and printouts. The closest thing to Brooks's documentary method.
- The oral-history interview format
- The logistics of a collapse
- Zombies played completely straight
- Cold and characterless by design
Worth a look — with a warningThe Road
Cormac McCarthy
Everything Brooks explains, McCarthy refuses to. If you want the emotional weight rather than the analysis, this is the other pole of the genre.
- The logistics of a collapse
- Told entirely in retrospect
- No explanation of anything
Worth a look — with a warningThe Maze Runner
James Dashner
Here for the outbreak backstory more than the maze. Young, fast and much less interested in how the world actually works.
- Short self-contained chapters
- Zombies played completely straight
- Written for teenagers
Great matchThe Zombie Survival Guide
Max Brooks
Brooks's earlier book, and the one that built the rulebook World War Z obeys. Played dead straight from cover to cover, which is why it is funny.
- Zombies played completely straight
- Short self-contained chapters
- Satire of governments and armies
- A manual, not a story
What should you read after World War Z?
World War Z by Max Brooks works on several levels at once, and which book you should read next depends on which of those levels got you. For most readers the closest match is The Stand by Stephen King — the other great American plague epic, and the one Brooks grew up on. Where he gives you a hundred voices for a page each, King gives you a dozen for a thousand.
If what stayed with you was zombies played completely straight, read The Walking Dead: Compendium One by Robert Kirkman instead: the same commitment to playing the premise absolutely straight, with survivors who are the real problem. Forty-eight issues in one brick. Zone One by Colson Whitehead is the other strong option — the clean-up crew: a man sweeping lower Manhattan for stragglers, thinking about his old life. Brooks's reconstruction phase, written by a literary novelist.
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