Severance

Severance is Ling Ma's debut novel, set in the aftermath of Shen Fever, a fungal pandemic originating in Shenzhen that causes its victims to repeat familiar routines compulsively until they die. The novel alternates between two timelines. In the first, Candace Chen continues going to her publishing job and documenting the emptying city on a blog called NY Ghost in the months before and during the collapse. In the second, she is a survivor traveling with a small group led by a man named Bob toward a promised sanctuary in Chicago. Ma uses the pandemic and Candace's relentless continuation of routine as a lens for examining immigrant identity, labor, consumerism, and the way modern life already resembles the fevered repetition that destroys its victims. Winner of the Kirkus Prize for Fiction, 2018.

Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, black boards. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2018. Kirkus Prize winner (2018). ISBN: 9780374261597. #11230.
Fine in fine dust jacket.