That its author, a Chinese American immigrant, has refrained from all media requests is perhaps telling. For as the pandemic precipitates spikes in xenophobic sentiments, any overidentification with Ma’s novel based primarily on its ethnic coordinates (“ Severance … tells the story of world-wide pandemic originating in China,” summarizes Lithub) should give us pause.

And while I do not begrudge anyone the catharsis of readerly projection-especially during these bizarre times-that doesn’t mean that “ Severance: it’s just like us” hot takes are missing the point. “It feels ominous that the situation with the novel coronavirus is even passingly similar,” admits Bijan Stephen in The Verge, “even though Ma’s book is set in an alternate past.” Yet the speed at which some readers have readily accepted the parallels may say more about them than the book itself. Published in 2018 but set in 2011-Ma narrates apocalypse in the key of alternate history-reviews have been quick to note its eerie prescience. The appeal of Severance lies in its literal resonance with our contemporary situation. The novel’s themes of contagion are, it seems, having a second-order life amid real-life virality. 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.

Severance novel