Jane Austen classic Pride and Prejudice revamped as zombie slayer novel
February 08, 2009 09:16pm
JANE Austen's classic novel Pride and Prejudice is being updated as a zombie horror book and film.
A parody of the English novel is due to be published in April under the name Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, with Hollywood studios already bidding to turn the new book into a blockbuster movie.
The new book has been penned by Los Angeles-based TV comedy writer Seth Grahame-Smith, who has been able to update Austen's original tale because it is out of copyright.
Austen fans are in for a shock, with heroine Elizabeth Bennet and her four sisters becoming zombie slayers and taught how to fight like Japanese ninjas by Mr Darcy.
"It quickly became obvious that Jane (Austen) had laid down the blueprint for a zombie novel," The Sunday Times quoted Grahame-Smith as saying.
"Why else in the original should a regiment arrive on Lizzie Bennet's doorstep when they should have been off fighting Napoleon?
"It was to protect the family from an invasion of brain-eaters, obviously."
Grahame-Smith said about 85 per cent of his novel is Austen's original text.
"I hated her when I was forced to read Austen in school, but when I started re-reading I realised she was a brutal, but very funny, satirist," he said.
"I can only aspire to be as mean-spirited as she could be."
I admit, I'm GOING to buy and read this book. I can't resist the lure, the sweet masochistic desire to read this...I don't even know what this is!! Jane Austen...with zombies. Part of me (the biblio-geek) is OVERJOYED that someone thought of this and published it. I, like Elizabeth Bennett, adore absurdity, especially absurd-lit. Can't get enough of it. P&P&Z sounds like the cream of the absurdity crop.
Pride & Prejudice is, hands down, my favorite book based soley on the fact that it was my first love, what made me into an elitist book nerd to begin with. I personally think, like the author of the zombie version of P&P, that Jane Austen herself would find this idea HILARIOUS because she was herself a satirist of the highest caliber. But will non Austen-ites get the joke? I hope so! I'd like to see more classics with zombies in them!
-Moby Dick with zombies! (Ahab craves the brains of the white whale! Ishmael! Grab your boomstick!)
-Huckleberry Finn with Zombies! (Hordes of zombies cruising down the Mississippi on rafts! Their Necromancer Overlord? N-word Jim out for REVENGE!)
-Alice in Wonderland with Zombies! (I dont think the addition of zombies could POSSIBLY make that book weirder!)
-Jane Eyre with Zombies! (Who's Mr. Rochester got trapped in his tower!? HIS PSYCHO WIFE who is also a ZOMBIE!)
-Wuthering Heights with Zombies! (Heathcliff comes back and OMG HE'S A ZOMBIE!)
-Hamlet with Zombies(Alas, poor Horatio! I knew him wel-OMG HE'S CHEWING ON MY LEG!)
-Treasure Island with Zombies!(Egad! Pirate Zombies! Help! We're trapped in a John Carpenter remake!)
..I think I'll reserve judgement until I read this book. And I WILL read this book.
Also this book.
3 comments:
You beat me to the zombie Austen. I shake my fist at thee! Shake! (Also, I want you to know you are directly to blame for my upcoming Rob Liefeld post)
The Time Machine...with Zombies!
"And I have by me, for my comfort, two strange white flowers - shriveled now, and brown and flat and brittle - to witness that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man." But when that man turned, the tenderness left his heart and was replaced with a craving for BRAINS!
"For a moment I was staggered, though the import of this gesture was plain enough. The question had come into my mind abruptly: were these creatures fools?" It was as though gnawing on another being's foot was not odd in the slightest of senses.
"In a moment I knew what had happened. I had slept, and my fire had gone out, and the cold bitterness of death had come over my soul." At that moment I realized I had begun to crave brains...
HAHA. Epic lols.
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood... with ZOMBIES!
(though Robin valiantly cut down dozens of the abominations with his mighty bow, it was his Marian that was his undoing. he couldn't bear to loose the string, and so, was bitten.)
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