cbc Books / January 03, 2019

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 bombing, her friend Will becomes obsessed with tracking her down. R.O. Kwon's novel is a look at love and loss in the face of fundamentalism. 

Forbes / December 17, 2018

The Incendiaies by R.O.Kwon follows three Korean-Americans who meet at a prestigious liberal arts college. Will is a shy, formerly devout evangelical.  He falls in love with Phoebe, a party girl with a traumatic past she struggles to repress. They fall under the spell of John Leal, an eccentric, messianic figure who inspires a cult of fervently gullible undergraduates. This is a story about religious fanaticism, the perversion of faith into something more dangerous. All the characters deceive one other about their past and present lives, echoing the malevolent arrogance captured so well by Donna Tartt in her campus novel, The Secret History. Kwon’s style is spare, the narration jumps across time and characters, but this debut novel is a powerful examination of the madness of extremism.  

the atlantic / December 26, 2018

The neat trick of The Incendiaries, a book consumed by the validity and the orthodoxy of religion, is that it sweeps readers so absorbingly into the stories being told that you might forget to question their reliability.

NPR / August 01, 2018

R. O. Kwon's pensive debut novel, The Incendiaries, arrives just in time to stoke up "back-to-school" anxieties, especially those of entering college students and their nervous parents.

Buzzfeed / May 22, 2019

Writers Nicole Chung, Andrew Ahn, R.O. Kwon, Don Lee, and Karen Chee reveal their creative processes.

Profil / July 31, 2019

Sie haben alles, was man sich nur wünschen kann: Sie studieren an einer amerikanischen Eliteuniversität, finanzielle Nöte kennen sie nicht. Was wie ein klassischer College-Liebesroman beginnt – zwei Außenseiter finden sich –, entwickelt sich schon bald zur abgründigen Psychostudie über Kids, die in die Fänge eines Sektenführers geraten, der auch vor Anschlägen nicht zurückschreckt. Im Drogenrausch demonstrieren seine Jünger vor einer Abtreibungsklinik, die schließlich in Flammen aufgehen wird.

- / August 01, 2019

R.O. Kwon's scintillating debut novel, The Incendiaries (published last year by Riverhead and now available in paperback), examines the ways that faith can be both a balm and a blight. The book's beating heart is the stormy relationship between Will and Phoebe, two college freshmen who seem to seek solace from their sorrows in one another. It's a bad romance that's by turns mangled and magical; Kwon writes dazzlingly about the bewilderment of desire.

Lancaster / July 30, 2019

 R.O. Kwon’s first book has gotten in the way of her second book. Critics showered Kwon’s debut, “The Incendiaries,” with praise, it made its way onto The New York Times bestseller list, and it was named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award for Best First Book.

The New York Times / May 17, 2018

Introducing 4 Writers to Watch This Summer : R.O. Kwon, Judy Blundell, Masih Alinejad and James A. McLaughlin talk about their new books.

VANITY FAIR / May 22, 2018

From debut authors R. O. Kwon and Fatima Farheen Mirza to veterans Rachel Cusk and Amitava Kumar, 13 novels and short-story collections you won’t want to miss.