An Upside-Down Sky: A Novel

By: Linda Dahl

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Synopsis: When Lidia, a blocked Latinx artist in her sixties, goes on a group tour of Namyan, a fictional Southeast Asian country reopened to the world after a long dictatorship, she gets much more than the vacation she thinks she&’s signed on for. Against a backdrop of pagodas and enigmatic customs, she and the disparate crew of eighteen Americans on the tour encounter one adventure after another—experiences that challenge their assumptions about their host country&’s placid surface of beautiful pagodas and wandering Buddhist monks. Along the way, Lidia finds companionship and sexual pleasure with Haynes, a Black man seeking adventure—even danger—in Namyan. On a nighttime excursion among mysterious ancient buildings, they watch the nighttime sky. Lidia remarks that the stars look upside down – a metaphor for Namyan as a foreign place and for her. She enjoys being with Haynes but is conflicted. The final chapter reveals a secret, the source of her conflict, and her steps towards a new freedom.An Upside-Down Sky&’s cast of characters, including their Namyanese guide, mirrors America: straight, gay, gender-fluid, black, brown, white, progressive, conservative, artistic, repressed, old, young. Some of them accept Nanyam&’s charming façade at face value, while others seek to understand the country&’s brutal repression by the military and ongoing ethnic conflicts. And most, resistant as they might be to change, are transformed by their time there.