Apocalyptic Office Novel: An Interview with Ling Ma

Ling Ma’s debut novel, Severance, transcends any typical classification. It is part satirical office drama, part immigrant narrative, part millennial bildungsroman—with a dash of zombie apocalypse. Severance chronicles the life of Candace Chen, an obedient worker bee who is one of the last people alive in New York City after the Shen Fever strikes. The “fevered” who populate the city aren’t your classic teeth-gnashing, skin-peeling zombies. Instead, victims of the Fever are reduced to creatures of habit—they adhere mindlessly to their everyday grinds until they quite literally work themselves to death.

Before the Fever, Candace works for a Bible production company in New York that outsources its labor to Southeast Asia. When the city starts to crumble and all of her coworkers flee, Candace chooses to stay behind and work—in part because her only family is far away in China and in part because she finds comfort in the familiarity