The Monocle Quarterly Journal is a business journal dedicated to interrogating and commenting on the underlying forces that drive the large-scale changes that we witness globally.

Each issue of the Monocle Quarterly Journal pays attention to a carefully chosen theme. In an attempt to explore some of the stranger realities of the times in which we are currently living, and to do so in a spirit of creativity and originality, in this issue, we consider the figure of the zombie in modern fiction – a creature that is neither good nor evil, neither alive nor dead, and which exists only to infect and kill. The recurrence of zombies in our storytelling appears to be connected to a subconscious expression of our deepest collective fears – and plausibly, an expression of the deeply ingrained fear of the plagues that took place as far back as the 14th century. Though the idea of zombies may seem to have nothing to do with banking, economics and politics, when these creatures are analysed as they are presented in fiction and film, it is clear that these cultural artifacts have disturbingly presaged and predicted the 21st century plague that has impacted every aspect of our lives as individuals and as a collective. We have therefore decided to embark on this analysis of zombies in popular culture, with short counterpoints anchored in the present that reflect our circumstances in this time of great change.