A book which has taken Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and mashed it up with the essential elements of a zombie film is sweeping the book charts in the US and looks likely to do the same in Austen’s home country. The book by Seth Grahame-Smith sees Elizabeth Bennet and her sisters fighting a plague of zombies who are terrorising the quiet village of Meryton. Writing in the Guardian, Alison Flood notes that the book has leapt to the top of Amazon UK’s movers and shakers chart.

The novel uses original scenes from Jane Austen but adds “all new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem,” written by Grahame-Smith so that we have new improved passages such as this one: “Mr Darcy watched Elizabeth and her sisters work their way outward, beheading zombie after zombie. He knew of only one other woman in all of Great Britain who wielded a dagger with such skill, such grace and deadly accuracy.”

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is already attracting interest for film rights and spawned ideas for other literary mash-ups. Grahame-Smith who is a screenwriter says that he’s pleased by the idea’s success but he’s not sure if he’s the man for the job of mashing up future classics. “I don’t know that I want to follow this book up with Sense and Sensibility and vampires, because I could easily box myself in as being the mash-up guy,” he said.

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