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Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
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Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2007) (edit title/settings)

by Paul Torday (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

Dr. Alfred Jones is a henpecked, slightly pompous middle-aged scientist at the National Centre for Fisheries Excellence in London when he is approached by a mysterious sheikh about an outlandish plan to introduce the sport of salmon fishing into the Yemen. Dr. Jones refuses, but the project,... read more

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Quotes edit see section history

  • “I had belief. I did not know , or for the moment care, what exactly it was I had to believe in. I only knew that belief in something was the first step away from believing in nothing, the first step away from a world which only recognised what it could count, measure, sell or buy.”
    Fred Jones
  • “Others aver that what Tertullian wrote was not "Certum, impossible est" but "Credo, quit impossible est" - I believe in it, because it is impossible. I like that. Don't you?”
    Fred Jones

First Sentence edit see section history

Dear Dr Jones, We have been referred to you by Peter Sullivan at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (Directorate for Middle East and North Africa).

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Paul Torday (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Country: UK
Publication Date: 2007
ISBN: 978-0297851585
Page Count: 320

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: PR6120.O73 S25 2007
  • Dewey: 823.92

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

  • Book Review: In Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, Dr Alfred Jones is a fisheries expert at the National Centre for Fisheries Excellence. His wife is distant, both emotionally and physically, and his work with salmon is about all he has. When a rich Yememi sheik offers money for help in populating Yemeni waters with salmon, Jones writes it off as a foolish scheme doomed to failure. But the Foreign Office and the Prime Minister's office are blinded by the attraction of money and political capital, and Jones is sent to Yemen to make it happen. He is aided in his efforts by the sheik's assistant, Harriet Chetwode-Talbot, who fills the gap in his life that his wife has left.
  • Book Review: A light satirical comedy in the vein of Sue Townsend or David Nobbs, it concerns a Yemeni sheikh's desire to export salmon to the highlands of his homeland, in the hope that being able to fish will raise the spirits of the local inhabitants. Told through a series of extracts from diaries, feasibility reports, emails and interviews, the novel combines political satire, Pooteresque whimsy, and a surprisingly tragic ending. Torday has a debut novelist's fearlessness, shifting from a soldier's death in Iraq to a detailed dissection of a boring marriage.
  • Book Review: The bizarre idea for his first success came in a business meeting. “I’d been travelling a lot to the Middle East. Also, I was helping to set up a charity to do with the health of the local river. I like fishing. In one of those meetings, while not listening to what was going on, I got this crossover idea: fishing, desert. It would be nice to write a book that was really a metaphor for not getting involved in the Middle East.”
  • Book Review: The protagonist is Dr Alfred Jones, known as Fred a boring lower ranking civil servant, a fisheries specialist in fact for the National Centre For Fisheries Excellence. He reluctantly thanks to higher officialdom forcing him to do so becomes part of a project to introduce the sport of salmon fishing to the Yemen. The course of British Politics and his own life are changed forever as gradually Fred becomes fascinated with the project. As he studies the feasibilities for the Sheikh whose idea this all is, he also grows emotionally and is no longer the underdog husband or lowly civil servant whose high points in life include publishing an article in a fishing magazine on fly larvae or acquiring a new electric toothbrush!
  • Book Review: Paul Torday's debut novel is about an impossibility. It is also about belief in the impossible, and belief itself. And the remarkable thing is that a book about so deeply serious a matter can make you laugh, all the way to a last twist that's as sudden and shocking as a barbed hook. As with all good comedy, there's a tragic underside, a story of love and loss and another of love that never was. And there is satire. Torday's aim is deadly; but then, his targets are big. Jay Vent, the British prime minister, has taken his country into wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and elsewhere in the region: the story is set in the nearish future . . .) and has dug himself into the deepest of holes. So what does he do? Of course: he goes on digging. "We're pretty much committed to going down a particular road in the Middle East," says Vent, a graduate, like his real-life counterpart, of the White Queen's school of logic, "and it would be difficult to change that very much without people beginning to ask why we'd started down it in the first place."

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