In 2018, just two years shy of the real-life pandemic, Ling Ma published her debut novel “Severance,” which follows cynical protagonist Candace Chen on her survival journey after a fictitious disease called Shen Fever sweeps the globe. Spoilers ahead.

Shen Fever has eerie parallels to COVID-19, with an initially lackluster governmental response followed by a rapid push for remote work and face masks. However, Shen Fever has notably more dire consequences: Each person who contracts the disease becomes a zombified shell of their former self, doomed to infinitely repeat some mundane routine from their old life as their body gradually decays. Victims of the fever set dirty plates around the dinner table for some imaginary meal on loop and turn pages of books they can no longer read. As the novel progresses, it becomes clear that Shen Fever has no cure. 

“Severance” uses a non-chronological narrative structure that jumps between desolate, post-fever North America, Candace’s monotonous pre-fever life in New York City and Candace’s childhood in Fuzhou, China. 

Ma implies that the bleak fate of “the fevered” is not so different from Candace’s pre-fever life; the novel devotes paragraphs and lists to describing Candace’s daily tasks and frequently mentions her affinity for routines. For weeks after everyone has either succumbed to the fever or fled New York to survive, Candace remains in the city and continues to attend work alone. 

Ma draws comparisons between the routines humans perform under capitalism and the routines Shen Fever brings out in its victims, symbolizing the way capitalism can rob people of mental autonomy. In one nauseating scene, Candace finds a fevered taxi driver who continues to circle the barren streets of New York, still waiting for customers even as his flesh rots off his bones. Even death does not exempt him from labor. 

Candace’s job is to oversee the production of Bibles using outsourced Chinese labor, and she expresses her guilt about the job periodically. Her work is dependent on the exploitation of people in her native country, and she’s keenly aware of the dissonance between her own success and the suffering of Chinese laborers. In fact, everyone in the novel seems to have jobs that feel unfulfilling or ethically murky. 

On the first page of the novel Ma writes, “We were brand strategists and property lawyers and human resources specialists and personal finance consultants,” all fairly useless white-collar careers that would not exist without capitalism. 

The survivor’s guilt that Candace and her companions feel after Shen Fever decimates North America isn’t the only kind of guilt they face. Ma uses the apocalyptic backdrop to explore the guilt that many middle-class millennials with purposeless careers experience: the guilt of surviving under capitalism. Everyone has questioned the greater purpose of their work and contemplated the impact of their presence on society, and Ma turns this universal insecurity against readers masterfully. 

In many ways, Candace embodies the ever-unattainable “American dream.” She emigrates from China with her family at a young age and goes on to become a financially successful corporate worker living in New York City. Candace’s only happy memories are from her childhood in Fuzhou, when she was carefree and blissfully unaware of anything to do with money. 

Candace entertains a secret fantasy of moving back to China and living a “simple” life as a wife and mother. However, when she travels to Hong Kong on a business trip, she discovers that her time in the U.S. has changed her too irrevocably to ever feel at home in China. Ma’s portrayal of the alienation felt by second generation immigrants like Candace points out a flaw in the American dream: Whatever capitalism offers, it also takes something away. Candace has more money than she knows what to do with, yet she is divorced from her culture and unmoored from everywhere she has ever called home. Ma poignantly captures the bitter sting of not belonging, a feeling children of immigrants and young people with mixed backgrounds know intimately. 

Ma portrays capitalism as a force that, like Shen Fever, is inescapable. Candace and her companions spend the majority of the novel making a pilgrimage to an abandoned shopping mall dubbed the “Facility,” symbolizing the persistence of American capitalism and materialism. Even in a post-pandemic world, where in theory, capitalism would no longer have any bearing on the survivors of Shen Fever, Ma sneaks brand names onto practically every other page, and social hierarchies form within Candace’s semi-cultish group of survivors.

Ma’s portrayal proves accurate. In today’s pandemic, consumerism is more prevalent and accessible than ever. In 2020, there were 256 million digital buyers in the United States, which was 78% of the population at the time. By 2025, the percentage of digital buyers in the U.S. is projected to increase by about 10% more, according to Statista. While a disease ravages the world, people turn to shopping for comfort; somehow Ma predicted that not even a global crisis can deter the consumerist appetite. 

Despite all the somber symbolism and negative messaging about capitalism, the end of “Severance” brings Candace freedom and hope. Candace is given the opportunity to start fresh in Chicago’s abandoned skeleton, and despite everything, she maintains an optimistic outlook. Hopefully, the COVID-19 pandemic will grant the world the same opportunity, giving everyone the chance to reevaluate the systems that failed and unite in favor of new ones. 

This is not to say that society has to break down to overcome the oppressive nature of capitalism, but already COVID-19 has radicalized communities with collective care and exposed economic structural flaws. Breaking out of capitalism’s forced routine to instead do community work, make one’s voice heard and act out of hope are the next steps toward liberation.

 “Severance” utilizes satire and symbolism to expose the disease of consumerism, and it is a must-read for lovers of science fiction and haters of capitalism.