Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

Paul Torday

 

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen is a much acclaimed book, having won the 2007 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction.  It has since become a  major film starring Ewan MacGregor and Emily Blunt. This is the first novel written by Paul Torday, who has subsequently written a number of popular novels.

Dr Jones is a fish specialist, working for a UK government department.  His small world is about to be shaken up, with the invitation by Sheikh Muhammad to introduce salmon – and the sport of salmon fishing – to his native Yemen.  The government sees this as a great opportunity to capitalise on a good news story in the Middle East.  Dr Jones remains unconvinced that the project will work and that the salmon in question will actually survive in the desert conditions of Yemen.

Through a mixture of diary entries, interviews, emails, letters, and formal reports, we are introduced to the developing plans and schemes for this impossible project, and the characters who influence the success (or otherwise) of it.

This is not so much a book about fishing as it is about faith and belief: the belief in one man’s dream, and the ways in which it can change another man’s world.

Questions

How does the changing narrative style (letters, emails, diary entries, interviews, scripts) affect the way that you engaged with the novel?

The novel positions the Western world of science and reason alongside the developing world of the Middle East, where there is greater interest in the mystical.  Which worldview do you find most compelling in the novel?  Why?

How does the unseen character of Captain Robert Matthews help and/or hinder the wider political perspectives of the novel?

Which characters do you find the most compelling? Why?

Which storylines do you find the most difficult?  Why?

In what ways is the novel about salmon fishing in the Yemen?  What else would you have called the book, given its themes?

The Sheikh says ‘without faith there is no hope, and no love. Faith comes before hope and before love.’

·       Do you agree?

·       How does this play out in the novel?

·       How have you experienced this in your own life?

Dr Jones says that he has moved on from going to church to going to Tesco’s

·       What has he lost or gained from this?

‘In this Old Testament land it is difficult not to believe in myths and magic and miracles.’

·       What does the Sheikh mean by this?

·       When and where have you believed in myths and magic and miracles?

·       What effect might a different context have in helping people to experience the spiritual?

‘I believe in it because it is impossible.’

·       Is this enough?

·       What has led Dr Jones to reach this conclusion?  Is he right to believe?

Who and what does Dr Jones believe in, by the end of the novel?

The book is intended as a satire on the UK’s bureaucracy and political systems. In what ways does it achieve this aim?

How satisfied are you at the end of the novel?

·       What would you like to have happened differently?

·       What would you like to have known more about?

Further idea: Why not arrange to watch the film together with your group when it comes out on DVD?  You could discuss the changes that the filmmakers have made to the novel.  You may also want to invite other friends to watch the movie with you, and perhaps even to join your book club as a result.