A campus cult, a triangle of love and belief, and the pull of extremism

A Debut Novel About a Campus Cult

The Incendiaries is the debut novel of R. O. Kwon, a Korean-born American writer, published by Riverhead Books in 2018. It is set at Edwards University in Noxhurst, a fictional town in upstate New York, and follows three people whose lives converge there: Phoebe Lin, a student gradually drawn into a cult; John Leal, the half-Korean college dropout who leads it; and Will Kendall, a classmate in love with Phoebe who cannot make sense of what she is becoming. The story is told through the perspectives of all three. The book was inspired by Kwon’s own loss of faith in God at the age of seventeen, and it took her ten years to finish.

Three Characters, Three Kinds of Loss

The novel grounds its portrait of radicalization in the private griefs and broken beliefs of its three central figures. Phoebe, born Haejin Lin to two South Korean parents, grows up a piano prodigy; once she masters a demanding piece and is praised for it, she concludes that her ambition will never match her talent and gives it up. Shortly before finishing high school, her mother dies in a car accident while Phoebe is driving. Those twin losses leave her reckless at university, drinking heavily and pursuing sex with little regard for her own safety. Will is a former evangelist from a poor white California family whose slow crisis of faith followed his father’s abandonment of the family, leaving them in debt and his mother emotionally and financially dependent on him; at Edwards he hides his relative poverty, works in a restaurant, and sends money home. John, the son of missionaries, is a half-Korean activist who, while helping North Koreans escape to China, was captured and held in a North Korean gulag, and who grows steadily more radical after his release.

Jejah and the Descent into Extremism

John draws Phoebe into a group he calls Jejah, which imposes a strict regimen on its followers. Alarmed, Will asks to join as a way of keeping watch over her, and for a time he too is drawn in by the discipline. At an anti-abortion rally, however, he becomes convinced that Jejah is a cult; as the group hardens, its militancy turns violent, and clinics that provide abortions around Noxhurst are bombed, killing five teenage girls who were practicing cheer routines in the abandoned parking lot of one of the sites. Will is certain John is responsible and reports him to the authorities, only to learn that the bombings may have originated with Phoebe. The relationship between Will and Phoebe has meanwhile collapsed, in part through his own destructive behavior, and she leaves him.

The novel’s central concern is how ordinary devotion—religious, romantic, or both—can curdle into something dangerous, and it refuses to let any of its figures off easily. A reviewer for The New York Times Book Review described it as a dark, absorbing story of how first love can be as intoxicating and dangerous as religious fundamentalism, while the CBC called it a brilliant examination of the minds of extremist terrorists. Its ending resists resolution: after a witness reports Phoebe jumping from a bridge, Will holds to the belief that she may have faked her death, since she was a strong swimmer, and that she may one day return.

Three Voices and a Deliberate Style

The book’s method is to rotate among its three narrators, so that Phoebe’s recruitment, Will’s jealousy and grief, and John’s radicalism are each seen from a distinct vantage. This multi-voiced structure allows the novel to hold competing versions of the same events without settling them. Reviewers singled out the prose for its control and polish; The A.V. Club praised what it called a timeless quality and the author’s sparkling, deliberate writing, and The New Yorker noted the book’s eerie, sombre power.

Praise, Prizes, and a Planned Adaptation

The Incendiaries was named a best book of the year by more than forty publications and organizations, among them the Today show, NPR, BuzzFeed, The Atlantic, PBS Books, Entertainment Weekly, and Vulture. Before its release, The New York Times named Kwon one of four writers to watch, and The Washington Post called the novel the most buzzed-about debut of the summer. It drew strong notices from The Guardian, which called it a startlingly assured book by an important new writer, and from the Los Angeles Times, which called it the rare book that lives up to its pre-publication hype. It was an American Booksellers Association Indie Next number-one Great Read and an Indies Introduce pick, and it was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Award for Best First Book, the Los Angeles Times First Book Prize, and the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association Fiction Prize; it was also nominated for the American Library Association Carnegie Medal and the Aspen Prize. In September 2022, FilmNation Entertainment and Wishmore Entertainment announced they were developing the book as a limited series, with Lisa Randolph writing and Kogonada directing.

The challenging piece Phoebe mastered was by the composer Libich. Will had recently transferred to the college after abandoning his religion and leaving his studies at a religious college. The two gradually grew close; Phoebe eventually confided in him about her mother’s death, and Will admitted his relative poverty and difficult home life. John is described as mysterious and as an Edwards drop-out who knows Phoebe’s father.

The Beijing Summer and the Fracture

Will obtained several promising positions at school and eventually an internship at an investment fund in Beijing. Phoebe, by then his girlfriend, planned to spend the summer with him, but slipping grades forced her to stay at school for remedial courses. During their time apart, Will was upset to find that Phoebe was spending more time with John Leal. When Will returned for the next semester, he and Phoebe moved in together, and he was surprised that she continued to attend Jejah sessions. At the anti-abortion rally, after taking sleeping pills to relax, he experienced vivid hallucinations. Phoebe sent him home rather than take care of him and spent the weekend with John Leal, and Will grew increasingly angry and jealous. As the relationship fractured, he noticed scars and bruises on Phoebe’s back thanks to penance inflected by John Leal. Wanting her to leave Jejah for good, Will proposed to Phoebe and then raped her, causing her to leave him and move out of their shared apartment.

The Investigation and Julian

The dean notified the F.B.I. Convinced Phoebe was innocent, Will agreed to help the F.B.I. with its investigation. After graduation Will moved to Manhattan, where he saw Julian, a friend of Phoebe’s. When Will tried to greet him, Julian told Will that Phoebe had shared the rape with him and that Julian believed Will caused the final mental break that caused her to fully commit to Jejah.