The Incendiaries - A Novel

Zusatztext 81028756 Informationen zum Autor R. O. Kwon is a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow. Her writing is published or forthcoming in the  New York Times !  New York ! The Guardian ! Vice! Buzzfeed! Time! Noon! Electric Literature ! Playboy! and elsewhere. Born in South Korea! she has lived most of her life in the United States. Klappentext Now a National Bestseller " Religion! politics! and love collide in this slim but powerful novel reminiscent of Donna Tartt's The Secret History ! with menace and mystery lurking in every corner." -- People Magazine "The most buzzed-about debut of the summer! as it should be...unusual and enticing ... The Incendiaries arrives at precisely the right moment." -- The Washington Post "Radiant...A dark! absorbing story of how first love can be as intoxicating and dangerous as religious fundamentalism." -- New York Times Book Review A powerful! darkly glittering novel of violence! love! faith! and loss! as a young woman at an elite American university is drawn into a cult's acts of terrorism. Phoebe Lin and Will Kendall meet in their first month at prestigious Edwards University. Phoebe is a glamorous girl who doesn't tell anyone she blames herself for her mother's recent death. Will is a misfit scholarship boy who transfers to Edwards from Bible college! waiting tables to get by. What he knows for sure is that he loves Phoebe. Grieving and guilt-ridden! Phoebe is drawn into a secretive cult founded by a charismatic former student with an enigmatic past. When the group commits a violent act in the name of faith! Will finds himself struggling to confront a new version of the fanaticism he's worked so hard to escape. Haunting and intense! The Incendiaries is a fractured love story that explores what can befall those who lose what they love most. 1. Will They’d have gathered on a rooftop in Noxhurst to watch the ­explosion. Platt Hall, I think, eleven floors up: I know his ego, and he’d have picked the tallest point he could. So often, I’ve imagined how they felt, waiting. With six minutes left, the slant light of dusk reddened the high old spiresof the college, the level gables of its surrounding town. They poured festive wine into big-bellied glasses. Hands shaking, they laughed. She would sit apart from this reveling group, cross-legged on the roof’s west ledge. Three minutes to go, two, one. The Phipps building fell. Smoke plumed, the breath of God. Silence followed, then the group’s shouts of triumph. Wine glasses clashed together, flashing martial light. He sang the first bars of a Jejah psalm. Others soon joined in. Carillon bells chimed, distant birds blowing white, strewn, like dandelion tufts, an outsize wish. It must have been then that John Leal came to her side. In his bare feet, he closed his arm around her shoulders. She flinched, looking up at him. I can imagine how he’d have tightened his hold, telling her she’d done well, though before long, it would be time to act again, to do a little more— But this is where I start having trouble, Phoebe. Buildings fell. People died. You once told me I hadn’t even tried to understand. So, here I am, trying. 2. John Leal Once John Leal left Noxhurst, halfway through his last term of college, he drifted until he ended up in Yanji, China. In this city, adjacent to North Korea, he began working with an activist group that smuggled Korean refugees toward asylum in Seoul. He’d found his life’s work, he thought. Instead, he was kidnapped by North Korean agents, spirited across the border, and thrown into a prison camp outside of Pyongyang. In the stories he later told the group, he said the gulag brutalities were bad enough, but at least they’d been expected. What asto...

Product details

• Authors: R O Kwon, R. O. Kwon, R.O. Kwon
• Publisher: Riverhead
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.07.2018
• EAN: 9780735213890
• ISBN: 978-0-7352-1389-0
• No. of pages: 224
• Dimensions: 138 mm x 209 mm x 21 mm
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature