This November, Inkshares published Quincy Carroll’s debut novel, Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside, which tells the story of two Americans living and teaching in rural China (Trade Paperback; $15.95). The first, Thomas, is an entitled deadbeat, content to pass the rest of his days in Asia skating by on the fact that he’s white, while the second, a recent college graduate named Daniel, is an idealist at heart. Over the course of the novel, these two characters fight to establish primacy in Ningyuan, a remote town in the south of Hunan, with one of their more overzealous students, Bella, caught in between. Quincy Carroll’s cleverly written debut novel examines what we bring from one country to another.

An estimated 250,000 native English speakers work as English teachers abroad. The novel explores the tension between two expats with different perspectives on what it means to be an American in China.

Read the first chapter of the novel here:

Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside – chapter 1 for Kitaab

Quincy Carroll was born and raised in Natick, Massachusetts. After graduating from Yale in 2007, he moved to Hunan, China to teach English. Upon returning to the States, he was a student in the MFA Creative Writing program at Emerson College. He currently teaches Mandarin in Oakland, CA. Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside is his first novel.

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