Quincy Carroll's new novel
Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside: A Novel (Inkshares, 2015) follows the experiences of a handful of expats teaching English in China, simultaneously offering a compelling story and a peek into various ways of making a life from encounters with dislocation. Readers explore Ningyuan (in Hunan) along with two very different though perhaps not so different(?) figures in the teachers (Thomas) Guillard and Daniel. As their stories and lives intersect the distinctions between these men begin to blur, as do the distinctions between notions of home and away, self and other, and much more. In the course of our conversation, Carroll and I spoke about the book, the experiences that helped inspire the novel, and his experience publishing fiction with Inkshares. Enjoy!