quote: Are you a fan of the biting social commentary and masterful irony of Jane Austen?
Ever wish she and Dawn of the Dead creator George A. Romero could have teamed up to bring one of her stories to the big screen?
Well, you'll have to wait a bit for that, but in the meantime, we have the next best thing:
Quirk Books' upcoming Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, billed as "the classic Regency romance—now with ultraviolent zombie mayhem!" It's due April 15.
The book is a posthumous—natch—collaboration between Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, the gentlemanly author of How to Survive a Horror Movie and The Big Book of Porn.
Here's how Quirk describes the book: "[It] features the original text of Jane Austen's beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action. 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. Complete with 20 illustrations in the style of C.E. Brock (the original illustrator of Pride and Prejudice), this insanely funny expanded edition will introduce Jane Austen's classic novel to new legions of fans."
Now if we could just get that vampire musical version of Sense and Sensibility set in a shopping mall ...
The cover alone screams out for a place on my bookshelf. Movies with my wife are the closest I have come to Jane Austen, but this looks good. How about a movie adaptation? They could bring back the actors from one of the ones they already made!
Posts: 3134 | Registered: Mar 2005
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I emailed them last night. Hopefully, I'll get one.
Of course, now I feel bad because I've never actually read "Pride and Prejudice." Everyone I know loves it and I just got scared that it had been overhyped for me
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I got my copy last week and have read the book. I can't talk about it until April 1 - there's a serious warning about online disclosure before that date.
But I can say I enjoyed the book, and now I'm reading the original and have watched two versions of it - a movie with Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen, and a mini-series with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth.
Comparing the movie and mini-series, there were performances in each that I preferred to the other. I liked Judi Dench's Lady Catherine (more imperious) better than Barbara Leigh-Hunt (more petulant). I think the mini-series was more true to the book.
Anyway, reading the "Zombies" version actually made me want to read the original.
Posts: 2034 | Registered: Apr 2004
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I still haven't read P&P so I picked up a copy of Austen's book and will finish it before reading the zombie edition.
I work at a bookstore and quite a few of the employees have gone nuts over this book. I've even talked to employees at other stores and they're anticipating that it will sell quickly and many are already trying to secure extra copies from the warehouses. It'll be nice to have a new recommendation for all of our "World War Z" fans.
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Don't forget to get Lost in Austen when it comes out on dvd in April. A good companion to the whole thing.
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