Phoebe, a young Korean-American woman, secretly blames herself for her mother's death. With this weight on her shoulders, she enrolls at an elite American university and finds herself drawn in by the leader of a secret extremist cult with ties to North Korea. When Phoebe disappears after a terrible...

While Castillo writes about the resilience of women, R. O. Kwon studies the obliteration of them in The Incendiaries (2018). In its opening pages, Phoebe, a Korean-American college student mourning her mother’s death, is connected to a terrorist explosion. As the remainder of the novel unfolds...

A Book Review of R.O.Kwon's <The Incendiaries> What an odd book. That’s not meant in a bad way. R.O. Kwon’s debut novel, “The Incendiaries,” deals with themes of obsession and how people fill the holes inside themselves occasioned by loss.

“The Incendiaries” is a sharp little novel as hard to ignore as a splinter in your eye. You keep blinking at these pages, struggling to bring the story into some comforting focus, convinced you can look past its unsettling intimations. But R.O. Kwon, the 35-year-old Korean American author, doesn’t...

R.O.Kwon's <The Incederies>, selected BUSTLE's The 30 Best Fiction Books Of 2018 When he meets her in their first year in college, Will immediately becomes infatuates with sad, glamorous Phoebe. But as Phoebe gets pulled into the mysterious world of John Leal and his cult, Will struggles to...