If you liked
Books like Severance
by Ling Ma
Severance is Ling Ma's deadpan apocalypse: a fungal plague empties New York while a millennial office worker keeps showing up to her job out of sheer habit, then joins a cult-ish band of survivors. It is a pandemic novel and a satire of work at once. If you want more smart end-of-the-world fiction, read on.
The shortlist
What to read next
Station Elevenby Emily St. John Mandel
“Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel 2014 review. A roving theatre troupe performs Shakespeare in the Great Lakes twenty years after a pandemic. National Book Award finalist 2014 and the canonical contemporary post-apocalyptic literary novel.”
The Glass Hotelby Emily St. John Mandel
“The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel 2020 review. A Vancouver Island bartender becomes a Manhattan Ponzi-scheme wife. Mandel's structural Station Eleven follow-up.”
Exit Westby Mohsin Hamid
“Exit West by Mohsin Hamid 2017 review. A young Middle Eastern couple escape civil war through magical doors that lead instantly to other cities. Booker Prize shortlist.”
The Standby Stephen King
“The Stand by Stephen King 1978 (and 1990 Complete & Uncut) review. A weaponized plague kills 99 percent of humanity. The survivors are pulled toward Boulder or toward Las Vegas, and the novel that follows is one of the great American epics of its decade.”
Sea of Tranquilityby Emily St. John Mandel
“Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel 2022 review. Four characters across four centuries are connected by the same anomalous moment. Mandel's third in the post-Station-Eleven sequence and the most structurally ambitious of the three.”
The Roadby Cormac McCarthy
“The Road by Cormac McCarthy 2006 review. A father and son walk south across a burned-out post-apocalyptic America toward an uncertain coast. Pulitzer Prize 2007 and one of the great American novels of the twenty-first century.”
FAQ
Common questions about Severance read-alikes
- What is the closest literary match?
- Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. Another flu-ends-the-world novel that cares more about art, memory and what people keep than about the collapse itself. It is the warmer companion to Severance's cooler satire, and The Glass Hotel connects to the same world.
- I want the satire-of-modern-life angle.
- Exit West by Mohsin Hamid pairs a refugee love story with magic doorways and the same quiet strangeness Severance brings to catastrophe. It is doing social critique through speculative fiction, exactly Ling Ma's move.
- I want the big, classic apocalypse.
- The Stand by Stephen King is the maximalist version, a weaponized flu and a country of survivors sorting into good and evil. Much bigger and more biblical than Severance, but the plague premise rhymes.
- I want the bleak, beautiful end of the genre.
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy strips the apocalypse to a father, a son and the dark, and Sea of Tranquility folds a pandemic into a time-looping meditation. One is devastating, the other hopeful, both are gorgeous.
The original