The end of the world arrives not with a bang but with a cough, and Candace Chen barely notices. Ling Ma's satirical novel follows a millennial Brooklynite who keeps going to work as a pandemic sweeps the globe, manufacturing nostalgia products for a company that will soon cease to exist. Shen Fever causes its victims to repeat familiar actions in an endless loop until they die; New York empties as survivors flee, but Candace stays to photograph the abandoned city until she can no longer ignore what has happened. Ma, herself the child of Chinese immigrants, filters apocalypse through the mundane routines that structure contemporary life. Candace reflects on her parents' sacrifice, her own aimlessness, and the strangeness of continuing to care about Bible production schedules when civilization is collapsing. Eventually she joins a group of survivors led by a charismatic man named Bob, heading toward a promised Facility that may offer safety or something darker. The novel was published before COVID-19 made its themes terrifyingly relevant, but Ma was already interested in how capitalism makes workers repeat actions without asking why. Shen Fever literalizes this compulsion, trapping victims in routines that have lost their meaning. Readers will find dark comedy, immigrant experience, and meditation on what we miss when the familiar world ends.