A psychologist with a savior complex offers shelter to a recently cancelled K-pop idol in this “first great K-pop literary phenomenon” ( Debutiful ) that is perfect for fans of Mouth to Mouth and Black Buck . Sang Duri is the eldest member and “visual” of a Korean boy band at the apex of global superstardom. But when his latest solo single accidentally leads to controversy, he’s abruptly canceled. To spare the band from fallout with obsessive fans and overbearing management, Duri disappears from the public eye by hiding out in the McMansion of a Chinese American woman he meets in a Los Angeles H-Mart. But his rescuer is both unhappily married and a psychologist with a savior complex, a combination that makes their potential union seductive and incredibly problematic. Meanwhile, in Seoul, the band’s music producer, Pinocchio, remembers his first brainchild: a girl group that tragically disbanded under mysterious circumstances. The past and the present combine to ignite a spiral of violent interactions that might change the fates of both the band members and the music industry. In its “gripping exploration of the complexities that accompany fame” ( Booklist ), The Band considers the many ways in which love and celebrity can devolve into something far more sinister. "Ma-Kellams is not the first novelist to examine the supposedly poisoned chalice of fame, or, as her narrator puts it, the 'compulsively addictive thinking' that can make an outward success want to die. She may, though, be one of the first to get at these ideas through a roving, time- and perspective-jumping story that links K-pop with classic psychological research. We all face pressure to succeed, and to look good doing it, she implies, famous or not. Some of us nearly work ourselves to death."— New York Times "Ma-Kellams takes readers on a gripping exploration of the complexities that accompany fame...This darkly humorous novel examines the more sinister aspects of celebrity and the profound impact it can have on the individuals caught up in global stardom. As K-pop has become a worldwide sensation, this timely book provides a different perspective on societal pressures associated with fame and the dangerous toll they can take on a person’s mental health."— Booklist "This could very well be the first great K-Pop literary phenomenon. Expect a stylized, pop culture romp."— Debutiful , Most Anticipated Books of 2024 "Equal parts academic and cheeky, Christine Ma-Kellams' debut novel The Band is the perfect companion for brainy pop culture heads, my people." —Anna Dorn, author of Exalted Christine Ma-Kellams is a Harvard-trained cultural psychologist, Pushcart-nominated fiction writer, and first-generation American. Her work and writing have appeared in HuffPost, Chicago Tribune, Catapult , Salon , The Wall Street Journal , the Rumpus , and many more publications. The Band is her first novel. You can find her in person at one of California’s coastal cities or online at ChristineMa-Kellams.com. Chapter 1: Canceled (Let’s Start at the End) 1 Canceled (Let’s Start at the End) Their first single—people laughed. Perhaps snorted would be more accurate. A quintet of boys, too young to understand protest, yet rapping like they knew the secret— everything you build will be destroyed, so make it beautiful. Between the eyeliner and wraparound shades, no one recognized them as the dickheads and nerds from around the way who were neither cute enough for the Seoul girls (who demanded both shoulders and double lids, Eurocentrism at its best) nor brilliant enough for the country teachers at Gwangju to take note. It’s true: the youngest one had just walked his eighth-grade graduation and looked it, but no matter—the rhymes paraded out of his still-small mouth so fast I couldn’t tell if he was speaking English or Korean, two languages that have never been confused for each other until The Band made Konglish their mother tongue. Sure, with the exception of their lead, their English was not terrific—not even now, when the world is an older and no wiser place, and every other collaboration of theirs is a pop anthem with some American icon who only does stadium tours. But that was the great forgiveness music afforded: songs demanded their own cadences; in pledging allegiance to its rhythms, other identifiers like age and accent and gender fell away like old skins on a serpent. If I closed my eyes and listened to the latest falsetto bridges the youngest released on SoundCloud, I might mistake him for a lady angel. It was no accident that the oldest was also the “visual.” To call Sang Duri “the Hot One” would be a failure of translation, the equivalent of equating schadenfreude with simpler joys. For a boy group with a long lineage of feral female fans, sex was not what they were selling. Like the Fab Four of yore,I a gifted tongue could render a man’s looks an afterthought. No matter that the lead recently admitted that those wraparo