Severance book ling ma5/8/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Shen Fever is an airborne fungal infection that turns the ill into zombie-like human shells who repeat certain everyday actions-setting the table, reading a book, driving a taxi-over and over again, ignorant to their surroundings and physical state, until finally they perish from hunger or exposure or are killed by uninfected looters. But beyond the immediate comparisons, Severance is a story about what it means to make a life when one has been removed-whether willingly or by force-from one’s familiar surroundings, and the faith and perseverance required in order to call a new place home. She even touches upon the race and class divide that has characterized the toll COVID-19 continues to take. It is indeed impossible to read the book without shuddering at the accuracy with which Ma depicts the initial frivolous attitude and skepticism people hold about masks-a frivolity that is soon followed by terror, alienation, unraveling, and displacement, all of which have come to pass in the real world. ![]() A lot has already been written about the eerie propheticism of Ling Ma’s 2018 debut novel Severance, in which a pandemic originating in China shuts down facilities and services and fells entire societies around the world. ![]()
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