FLUX

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A blazingly original and stylish debut novel about a young man whose reality unravels when he suspects his employers have inadvertently discovered time travel and are covering 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 and surreal literary debut that blends elements of neo-noir and speculative fiction as the lives of 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.

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***Finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel

***Longlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award

***A New York Times Editor’s Choice

***Named one of the best books of 2023 by: Esquire // GQ // Goodreads // Powell’s // Cosmopolitan // Debutiful

***Featured in The New York Times (x2) // The Washington Post // Vanity Fair // Vulture // Politico // New York Magazine // Esquire // Cosmopolitan // HuffPost // Mr. Porter // Writer’s Digest // The Seattle Times // The Boston Globe // Pittsburgh Post-Gazette // The Toronto Star // Shondaland // The Philadelphia Inquirer // Men’s Health // The Advocate // Gizmodo // Electric Literature // The Rumpus // SFX // Debutiful***

***An Amazon Editor’s Pick for Best Science Fiction & Fantasy***

***An Apple Books Pick for March***

***An April 2023 IndieNext Pick***

***Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2023 by: LitHub // Buzzfeed // Bloomberg Businessweek // Tor.com // Polygon // Publisher’s Weekly // Goodreads // Powell’s // NYLON // Crime Reads // SPY***

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“It’s a pleasure to encounter a work like Jinwoo Chong’s debut novel, Flux, that offers a healthy dose of brain-bending pleasure without making it the whole point...Flux happily offers a moving appraisal of lives buffeted by personal and systemic traumas; a deep dive into the good, the bad and the ugly of self-serving corporate culture; and no shortage of “wait, what the heck just happened?” thrills.” — Laird Hunt, The New York Times Book Review

“Ambitious...The narrative pleasures of Flux lie less in the big reveals than in watching Chong knit together genre tropes from sci-fi movies, speculative fiction and thrillers to tell a story about how what we remember can imprison us — and why freedom may lie within... The book is an imaginative exploration of how cultural memory and grief interact." — The Washington Post

“A… genre bending brain teaser.” — USA Today

"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

"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. The result is a gorgeous speculative gem for fans of Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone’s This Is How You Lose the Time War." — Publishers Weekly, STARRED review

"Not yet 30, Chong bursts forth, Athena-like, with an impossible-to-simply-label masterpiece that melds various genres—from Bildungsroman to speculative fiction, coming-of-age drama to epic tragedy, crime documentary to noirish thriller—into an intricate literary mosaic...Chong stuns readers with a multipronged, multilayered, multivoiced, magnificent enigma." — Booklist, STARRED review

“More literary alchemy than timey-wimey SF, Chong’s debut novel falls right on the emotional bubble between the cult film Donnie Darko and Charles Yu’s noodle-bender Interior Chinatown (2020).” — Kirkus, STARRED review

"Jinwoo Chong’s engrossing debut braids three narratives -- a boy in mourning, a whistleblower, and a laid-off media employee—to unspool a mystery examining pop culture and time." — Vanity Fair

"Jinwoo Chong has crafted a lavish mystery that’s hanging-off-the-edge-of-your-seat good." — Cosmopolitan

“Jinwoo Chong is an exciting emerging writer with endorsements with Alexander Chee, and it’s no wonder—the prose here is brilliant and honest, and the plot cleverly crafted. You can try to guess what might happen in Flux, but it’s better to let it bloom beautifully before you." — Tor.com

"Flux is aptly titled, and Chong's ability to tell a nuanced, intricate, and page-turning story shine in this immersive novel." — Shondaland

“Jinwoo Chong weaves time travel, pop culture and mystery in a highly anticipated speculative fiction masterpiece, “Flux.” — Politico

"Flux is brisk, stylish, and sexy, a high-stakes noir thriller that makes room for big philosophical ideas..." — The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Flux takes the classic time-travel story and the detective story and mashes them up to create something wholly original, something that lives in between genres in the same way that its queer, biracial Asian American protagonist navigates the world. This novel earns its place as a work of speculative fiction, queer fiction, and contemporary Asian American fiction." — Strange Horizons

"Part speculative fiction, part neo-noir, with some time travel thrown in for good measure, Flux is a wildly imaginative and mind-bending read." — Buzzfeed

“In one of the more ambitious literary debuts in recent memory, Chong jumps through time and between narratives, deftly weaving his characters’ storylines to create a noir-style piece of speculative fiction.” — Bloomberg Businessweek

"Jinwoo Chong’s experimental debut brings to mind Charles Yu’s similarly genre-bending novel Interior Chinatown: Both express a deep affection for Hollywood nostalgia, cut through with the bittersweet reckoning with their imperfect heroes who nonetheless made for unprecedented representation." — Literary Hub

"A...brilliant time-travel puzzle box." — Polygon

"Jinwoo Chong’s debut novel Flux is that perfect alchemy of disorienting and delightful. It’s also a masterclass on aspects of fiction ranging from point of view to structure to building and maintaining an enormous cast of characters to making room for joy." — Full Stop

“This witty, heartfelt look at celebrity scandals, the indelible imprints pop culture leaves on individuals, and the transformative power of grief packs plenty of thought-provoking twists into a sci-fi thriller with depth.” — Shelf Awareness

“Fans of Weird Queer and genre-blending speculative fiction, you’ll want to take note of this one!" — Book Riot

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

Flux is a powerful debut – deft and fluid, sharp and dreamy. Employing the vehicle of a breakneck sci-fi thriller, Jinwoo Chong explores interstitial spaces of ethnicity, sexuality, trauma, pop cultural memory and, finally, time itself, with wit, tenderness and alacrity. The result is provocative and deeply moving. — Sam Lipsyte, author of Venus Drive

A smart and stylish addition to the tech thriller genre with interesting things to say about family, society and, indeed, reality itself." — Gary Shteyngart, author of Little Failure

“Flux is smart and insightful, funny and full of compelling tragedy, and is home to the only place to watch the best television show that never existed. I'm excited for everyone who gets to read this novel for the first time again — Manuel Gonzales, author of The Regional Office is Under Attack!

Alluringly seductive and highly imaginative, reading Flux was like puzzling out a mystery always two steps ahead of me that I didn’t want to end. Chong has written an intricately layered and boldly cinematic debut that interrogates how the past collides with the present, and how our choices are bound up in not just who we wished we were, but who we dare to be. At once mind-bending yet grounded in timeless questions about forgiveness and hope, Flux is a kaleidoscope of a novel." — Elaine Hsieh Chou, author of Disorientation

"A compelling, deft, and mesmerizing book taking Korean American literature in a riveting and bold direction." — Joseph Han, author of Nuclear Family

Jinwoo Chong manages to combine a time-bending mystery, genre-bending adventure, and mind-bending literary novel into one stylish and propulsive thriller. You'll tear through it. — Lincoln Michel, author of The Body Scout

Flux is the book of my dreams—expertly mashing genres and deftly playing with both time and perspective to tell a deeply human, personal story. It’s almost hard to believe this is a debut, and it instantly elevates Jinwoo Chong to must-read status. — Rob Hart, author of The Warehouse

"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

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Cover design by Beste Miray Doğan // Melville House Books