Severance: A Novel

Maybe it’s the end of the world, but not for Candace Chen, a millennial, first-generation American and office drone meandering her way into adulthood in Ling Ma’s offbeat, wryly funny, apocalyptic satire, Severance.

"A stunning, audacious book with a fresh take on both office politics and what the apocalypse might bring." —Michael Schaub, NPR.org

“A satirical spin on the end times-- kind of like The Office meets The Leftovers.” --Estelle Tang, Elle

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY: NPR * The New Yorker ("Books We Loved") * Elle * Marie Claire * Amazon Editors * The Paris Review (Staff Favorites) * Refinery29 *Bustle *Buzzfeed *BookPage *Bookish * Mental Floss * Chicago Review of Books * HuffPost * Electric Literature * A.V. Club * Jezebel * Vulture * Literary Hub * Flavorwire

Winner of the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award * Winner of the Kirkus Prize for Fiction * Winner of the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award * Finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel * A New York Times Notable Book of 2018 * An Indie Next Selection

Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. With the recent passing of her Chinese immigrant parents, she’s had her fill of uncertainty. She’s content just to carry on: She goes to work, troubleshoots the teen-targeted Gemstone Bible, watches movies in a Greenpoint basement with her boyfriend.

So Candace barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York. Then Shen Fever spreads. Families flee. Companies cease operations. The subways screech to a halt. Her bosses enlist her as part of a dwindling skeleton crew with a big end-date payoff. Soon entirely alone, still unfevered, she photographs the eerie, abandoned city as the anonymous blogger NY Ghost.

Candace won’t be able to make it on her own forever, though. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. They’re traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. Should she escape from her rescuers?

A send-up and takedown of the rituals, routines, and missed opportunities of contemporary life, Ling Ma’s Severance is a moving family story, a quirky coming-of-adulthood tale, and a hilarious, deadpan satire. Most important, it’s a heartfelt tribute to the connections that drive us to do more than survive.

Ling Ma is a fiction writer hailing from Fujian, Utah, and Kansas. She is author of the novel Severance and the story collection Bliss Montage. Published in eight languages, her work has received a Kirkus Prize, a Whiting Award, an NEA fellowship. She lives in Chicago.

Winner of the 2019 NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award
Winner of the 2018 Kirkus Prize for Fiction
Winner of the 2019 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award
Winner of the 2019 Friends of American Writers First Prize in Literature
Finalist for the 2019 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel
Shortlisted for the 2019 Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award for Debut Speculative Fiction
A New York Times Notable Book of 2018
An NPR Best Book of 2018
An Elle Best Book of 2018
A Marie Claire Best Book of 2018
A Buzzfeed Best Book of 2018
A Refinery29 Best Book of 2018
A Jezebel Favorite Book of 2018
A Bustle Best Book of 2018
An Electric Lit Best Novel of 2018
A Lit Hub Best Book of 2018
A BookPage Best Book of 2018
A Bookish Best Book of 2018
A Mental Floss Best Book of 2018
A Chicago Review of BooksBest Book of 2018
A HuffPost Best Fiction Book of 2018
An Electric Literature Best Book of 2018
An A.V. Club Favorite Book of 2018
A Jezebel Favorite Book of 2018
A Vulture Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Book of 2018
Longlisted for the Aspen Words Prize
A Book of the Month Club Selection for December 2018
Shortlisted for the 2018 Chicago Review of Books Award
New York Magazine Approval Matrix, "Highbrow Brilliant"
An Indie Next Great Reads Selection
A Southern Living Best New Book of Summer 2018
A Millions Most Anticipated Book of 2018
An Alma Favorite Book for Fall
A Nylon Best Book of Summer 2018
A Chicago Magazine Summer Reading Pick
A Library Journal Summer Fall Best Debut Novel
An April Magazine Most Anticipated Book of 2018
A BookBub Laugh-Out-Loud Book of 2018
A Library Journal Debut With Credentials
A Refinery29 Best New Book of August 2018
A Greenlight Bookstore Pick in Brooklyn Paper

“Severance is the most gorgeously written novel I’ve read all year; when I finished it, I immediately picked it up and read it all over again.” —Jane Hu, The New Republic

“Severance is the best work of fiction I’ve read yet about the millennial condition—the alienation and cruelty that comes with being a functional person under advanced global capitalism, and the compromised pleasures and irreducibly personal meaning to be found in claiming some stability in a terrible world. I love how, in this novel, doom is inevitable, and yet it comes so slowly you might not even notice it. Ling Ma has written one of my favorite novels of the year.” —Jia Tolentino, New Yorker staff writer

“A satirical spin on the end times—kind of like The Office meets The Leftovers.” —Estelle Tang, Elle

"[A] standout debut. Satiric and playful—as well as scary . . . Ling Ma is an assured and inventive storyteller [and her novel] reflects on the nature of human identity and how much the repetitive tasks we perform come to define who we are. . . . A sardonic wake-up call." —Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air, National Public Radio

"[A] semi-surreal sendup of a workplace and its utopia of rules, not unlike Joshua Ferris's Then We Came to the End . . . Laced within Ma's dystopian narrative is an arresting encapsulation of a first-generation immigrant's nostalgia for New York . . . Severance evokes traces of . . . Joan Didion." —Antonia Hitchens, The New York Times Book Review

"How do you fit a zombie novel inside an immigrant story inside a coming-of-age tale? Ling Ma . . . accomplished this feat in her gripping and original turducken of a novel . . . Fascinating." —Trine Tsouderos, The Chicago Tribune

“Ma’s prose is, for the most part, understated and restrained, somewhat in the manner of Kazuo Ishiguro . . . Ma is at her most deft when depicting this kind of severance: the amputation of the immigrant’s past, preserved like a phantom limb whose pain is haunted with absence.” —Jiayang Fan, The New Yorker

"Gorgeously wacky." —Hillary Kelly, Vulture

“Tense and elegant, Ma’s writing here masterfully treads the line between genre fiction and literature. Part bildungsroman, part horror flick, Severance thrillingly morphs into a novel about self-worth, about the kinds of value we place on our own lives.” —Larissa Pham, The Nation

“Ling Ma’s extraordinary debut encompasses many genres and might just be the first and only coming-of-age, immigrant experience, anti-capitalist zombie novel you’ll ever need." —The Cut

“Ma’s writing about the jargon of globalized capitalism has a mix of humor and pathos that reminded me a little of Infinite Jest and a little of George Saunders.” —Emily Witt, The New Yorker

"I recommend [Severance] unreservedly: it’s perfect for when you’re living in that space between “oh shit, what if the world ends” and “oh shit, what if the world doesn’t end”—and truly, who isn’t living in that space right now?" —Katie Yee, Lit Hub

“Ling Ma’s Severance . . . sneaks up on you from all sides: it’s an affecting portrayal of loss, a precise fictional evocation of group dynamics, and a sharp character study of its protagonist, Candace Chen.” —Tobias Carroll, Tor.com

"Ling Ma delivers a fascinating coming-of-age novel, one full of millennial culture, post-apocalyptic adventures, and, perhaps most exciting of all, a zombie-like populace . . . Severance wonderfully demonstrates how the lifestyles we lead now can have a great impact on our future.” —M. M. Silva, Zyzzyva

"Shocking and ferocious . . . a fierce debut from a writer with seemingly boundless imagination. . . a wicked satire of consumerism and work culture . . . It's a stunning, audacious book with a fresh take on both office politics and what the apocalypse might bring: This is the way the world ends, Ma seems to be saying, not with a bang but a memo." —Michael Schaub, NPR.org

"A suspenseful adventure that doubles as a sly critique of late capitalism." —Boris Kachka, Vulture