Spicing up classic literature with zombies

How do you turn a boring classic novel into something new and exciting? Add a bunch of brain-hungry zombies, of course. At least, that is the approach that author Seth Grahame-Smith took with his novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
(aff link). The novel takes the popular Jane Austen story and turns it upside-down with zombies.

I’m reading the book right now and find it very funny. But I should also admit that I haven’t read the original Pride and Prejudice, so I might be missing out on some of nuances of the story. Nevertheless I’m still being thoroughly entertained. You can bet that when I’m finished, I’ll write a more detailed book review here.

When I first saw the book, with its disturbing cover, at my local bookstore, I instantly wondered how the author came about combining to a classic novel with zombies. Did he have a thing for Jane Austen? Or was this something that just seemed like a good idea? A quick Google search gave me my answer.

I came across this short interview with Seth from Entertainment Weekly. In it, he gives a glimpse as to the inspiration behind his novel:

My editor at Quirk had wanted to do a mash-up of some type for a long time. He had all these lists of public domain titles and lists of modern literary devices. The robot phenomenon. The vampire phenomenon. And zombies. And we arrived at Pride and Prejudice and Zombies because, when you take a look at the original book, it’s almost as if, subconsciously, Jane Austen is laying out the perfect groundwork for an ultraviolent bone-crushing zombie massacre to take place. For instance, there’s a regiment of soldiers camped out near the Bennett household. In the book, they’re just there for characters to flirt with. But it’s not that big a leap to say, Okay, they’re there because the countryside has been overrun with what they call the “unmentionable menace.”

And readers are lapping this up. As I write this the book is currently #28 on Amazon. I also recall that when the book first hit the stores, it was sold out for a while.

Good exercise for aspiring writers

If you are an aspiring writer, taking a classic novel and re-working it might be a good exercise. All the “hard work” has already been done: There’s already a plot, characters, setting, etc. You just have to change things around and add your own personal touch. You can either stay true to the original plot, or go totally off course and try to be original as possible.

It might be a good idea to do this with the classics – works that are in the public domain so you don’t have to worry about copyright infringement. This is especially true if you plan to get your re-working of a classic published.

Of course, you can do this with pretty much any novel or short story if you don’t plan on publishing and just want to do it for your own creative good. In fact there’s a fairly large community that does this for fun. It’s called fan fiction.

What classic piece of literature would you like to see re-written? What element would you add to spice it up? Zombies? Aliens? Robots? Monsters? Leave a comment below with your answers. I really look forward to seeing what you come up with.

Related posts

• Publishers fail to identify classic literature
• Vampires, zombies and the faddish nature of literature
• What do authors owe their readers?
• Are cell phones ruining some classic plot devices?
• Classics deemed boring – turned away!

Read More: Author News, Classic Literature, Literary News, Reading, Writing Tips