Flux

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In trying to describe Flux, I felt myself reaching for comparisons. In no particular order, I landed on: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow; the photo of Elizabeth Holmes holding a tiny vial of blood; Interior Chinatown; Inception; the bittersweet experience of aging; Glass Onion... Flux is a little bit of all these things, and yet totally unique. You will gasp, and cheer, and cry, and you will be changed. Recommended By Michelle C., Powells.com

Brazen, exhilarating, fun, and surprising I couldn't predict where this novel was going, but I was definitely along for the ride. — Ling Ma, author of Severance and Bliss Montage

A blazingly original and stylish debut novel about a young man whose reality unravels when he suspects his mysterious employers have inadvertently discovered time travel--and are using it to cover up a string of violent crimes...

Four days before Christmas, 8-year-old Bo loses his mother in a tragic accident, 28-year-old Brandon loses his job after a hostile takeover of his big-media employer, and 48-year-old Blue, a key witness in a criminal trial against an infamous now-defunct tech startup, struggles to reconnect with his family.

So begins Jinwoo Chong's dazzling, time-bending debut that blends elements of neo-noir and speculative fiction as the lives of Bo, Brandon, and Blue begin to intersect, uncovering a vast network of secrets and an experimental technology that threatens to upend life itself. Intertwined with them is the saga of an iconic '80s detective show, Raider, whose star actor has imploded spectacularly after revelations of long-term, concealed abuse.

Flux is a haunting and sometimes shocking exploration of the cyclical nature of grief, of moving past trauma, and of the pervasive nature of whiteness within the development of Asian identity in America.

"Flux stands out as a novel with ideas, dramatic scenes, and shifts in genre." — Counterpunch

"Provocative and propulsive, Flux is a delicious genre bender about the evolution of identity — the moments that bifurcate our lives and the ways in which we lose ourselves to trauma and time. A poignant, expertly constructed puzzle with an intellectual bite. I'll be thinking about this book for a very long time." — Julia Fine, author of The Upstairs House

"Mind-bending... Chong writes with such subtlety and skill that readers won't realize the true nature of the speculative mystery at play until they're already waist-deep in these interlocking narratives." — Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

Jinwoo Chong received an MFA from Columbia University. His short stories have appeared in The Southern Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, and Salamander. Flux is his first novel. He lives in New York.