What if one of literature’s most famous writers was actually a zombie? What if the early modern world teemed with zombies hidden in plain sight? Zombie fans, Shakespeareans, and lovers of language will find themselves savoring all 154 sonnets revived to their horrifyingly gory glory. Written in approachable, current language, the zombie sonnets make Shakespeare's themes of love, death, beauty, and fleeting time come alive. With only minor alterations, Shakespeare’s infected poems bare the bard’s brain, even as the brains of his numerous victims live on through his writing. Perhaps Shakespeare’s grave doesn’t hold his whitewashed bones after all. Perhaps instead it quarantines his moldering corpse from the public. Nevertheless, we need to hear Shakespeare’s voice more than ever as we increasingly imagine the end of the world.

The collection invites readers to see beauty in apocalypse. Each sonnet portrays a zombie encounter; accompanying vignettes expose the struggles of becoming zombie or staying human in early modern England. Original illustrations by Anna Pagnucci bring terrifying shape to the nightmare. Shakespeare will never be the same.