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Severance novel5/24/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() The piece itself is a fairly straightforward book review that never actually name-drops the coronavirus, which makes its accompanying tags all the more striking: “China health emergency,” “China virus,” “coronavirus,” and, amusingly, “unwind.” Since then, the connection has increased in volume and explicitness, especially in American media-spreading from references in think pieces to quarantine reading lists. The first online article that suggested the connection between Severance and the coronavirus seems to have appeared in late January, on India’s CNBC website. Unlike the coronavirus, however, the “Shen Fever” in Severance is uniquely fatal: Its victims become zombies of repetition-endlessly brushing their hair, applying and reapplying face lotion-until their bodies disintegrate. Similar to the coronavirus, the fictional virus in Ma’s novel is a flu-like virus that first appears in a major Chinese economic center (here, Shenzhen instead of Wuhan) and quickly moves outward, leaving no one unaffected. What is the difference between a real-life pandemic that originates in China and spreads globally and a fictional pandemic that originates in China and spreads globally? Ling Ma’s apocalyptic 2018 novel Severance-which might be accurately described in terms of the latter-has resurfaced due to its uncanny anticipation of our current global crisis. ![]()
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