![]() ![]() Phoebe is targeted by John Leal, a Korean-American former missionary who claims to have survived a stint in a North Korean gulag and now heads a religious group called Jejah (“submission” in Korean) based in Edwards College, a fictional east coast Ivy League university. The plot of The Incendiaries, the impressive first novel by RO Kwon, pivots around the indoctrination of another young woman, a college student named Phoebe Lin. He answers their yearning, unburdens them of free will and independent thought. Roger, trying to comprehend his daughter’s choice, wonders if “the terrible thing is they follow this man because he gives them what they need. A middle-aged midwestern couple, Roger and Maureen Janney, are in bewildered attendance: their daughter Karen is one of the congregants about to be betrothed by the man the Moonies call “Master”. The Unificationists were a Christian movement founded in the 50s, popularly dubbed the Moonies, after its South Korean founder, Sun Myung Moon. ![]() ![]() D on DeLillo’s 1991 novel Mao II opens with a mass marriage of tens of thousands of members of the Unification Church in Yankee Stadium. ![]()
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