A virus is spreading across the planet: an all-too-familiar scenario that Ling Ma takes up in her book “New York Ghost”. Do you want to read an end times story in the middle of a pandemic? In the case of the debut author, who was born in China and grew up in the United States, the answer is: absolutely! The clever novel is more than a dystopia; the 38-year-old combines topics such as integration, alienation, the search for meaning and globalization with a high level of storytelling.
“After the END came the BEGINNING. And at the BEGINNING we were eight, then nine – that was me – a number that would only decrease,” it says at the beginning (and the final remark doesn’t bode well). Me – this is Candace Chen, who, after escaping from a deserted New York City, joins a group of survivors on the way to Chicago. There, their self-appointed leader proclaims, the perfect place to stay awaits. On the way there, “New York Ghost” also contains elements of a road movie, there is increasing tension and ultimately violence.
It is frightening that months before Corona, Ling Ma came up with a story about a virus brought in from China that paralyzes the US metropolis – it came into the country through cheap consumer goods made in China. “New York Ghost” is also a razor-sharp criticism of capitalism and reports on cultural differences in a globalized world. Like the author, her protagonist was born in China. Chen encounters resentment in both her old and new homeland.
The novel works as a drama as well as a biting satire, as an original reflection on society and as an end-of-time thriller. It is thanks to the writing skills of the author that the numerous elements flow together into a coherent, entertaining and thought-provoking whole. In flashbacks, Chen tells of her previous life, of the search for security and love, of disappointments, frustrations and disorientation of a young woman in her twenties. The daily routines in her professional life seem no less surreal than those in the apocalypse.
“New York Ghost” is the perfect novel about the real pandemic. Because many aspects that Ling Ma shows are brand new and are up for discussion in the light of Corona. There is a lot in this atmospherically dense, amusing and threatening book.
(SERVICE – Ling Ma: “New York Ghost”, translated from the English by Zoë Beck, Verlag CulturBooks, 356 pages, 23.70 euros)
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