But what is most remarkable is the gentleness with which Ma describes those working within the capital-S System.

Smart, funny, humane, and superbly well-written. Kirkus Reviews, starred review Mas language does so much in this book, and its precision, its purposeful specificity, implicates an entire generation. Underneath Mas deadpan comedy lie shrewd observations of the West and the decadence of our everyday existence. Paris Review √ clever and dextrous debut. Publishers Weekly ∟unny, frightening, and touching.Ling Ma manages the impressive trick of delivering a bildungsroman, a survival tale, and satire of late capitalist millennial angst in one book, and Severance announces its author as a supremely talented writer to watch. Millions Most Anticipated This is a biting indictment of late-stage capitalism and a chilling vision of what comes after, but that doesn't mean it's a Marxist screed or a dry Hobbesian thought experiment.Ma also offers lovely meditations on memory and the immigrant experience. In the end, Severance isnt so much a story about zombies as it is an imaginative critique of capitalism.

A chapter of Severance received the 2015 Graywolf SLS Prize.

Her writing has appeared in Granta, Vice, Playboy, Chicago Reader, Ninth Letter and other publications. Prior to graduate school she worked as a journalist and editor. She attended the University of Chicago and received an MFA from Cornell University. Ling Ma was born in Sanming, China and grew up in Utah, Nebraska and Kansas. Should she escape from her rescuers? A send-up and takedown of the rituals, routines and missed opportunities of contemporary life, Severance is a moving family story, a deadpan satire and a heartfelt tribute to the connections that drive us to do more than survive. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit.

Candace joins a small group of survivors, led by the power-hungry Bob, on their way to the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. So she barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps the world. Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine: her work, watching movies with her boyfriend, avoiding thoughts of her recently deceased Chinese immigrant parents.

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