Book Reviews

Reviewed by Lynley Capon

Author Paul Torday worked as a businessman before writing Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2007, Phoenix Paperback, 319 pages), his first novel, at the age of 59. Inspiration came from his love of salmon fishing and connections to the Middle East.

Using these two strands, he creates a tragic-comic political satire that centres on the world of political spin management. Salmon Fishing won the 2007 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic writing and became a radio series for BBC 4. In 2008, it won the Waverton Good Read Award.

The book opens with a series of letters by people drawn into the idea of a salmon project in Yemen. A first letter comes from Harriet Chetwode-Talbot for an unnamed client to Dr Alfred (Fred) Jones, a fisheries scientist with the National Centre for Fisheries Excellence (NCFE). From there, NCFE management becomes hooked and eventually the British prime minister supports the scheme.

The client turns out to be a Yemeni sheikh, Muhammad ibn Zaidi bani Tihama, who sees salmon fishing as a way toward peace and “faith” that would benefit his people. Initially, Fred feels appalled at such a crazy scheme and ignores the incoming mail, a reaction that nearly costs his job.

Mary, Fred's wife of 20 years, tells him not to resign. She's a career woman of little emotion and the family's main breadwinner, but he still must do his bit for their income. Struggles within this marriage are woven into the story.

British Prime Minister James Vent admits, “We're pretty much committed to going down a particular road in the Middle East.” His PR man, Peter Maxwell, convinces him the salmon project will bring good publicity as photos of fishermen replace those of dead soldiers in Iraq.

Meantime, readers learn that Harriet's fiancé, a soldier, Robert Matthews, went to Iraq. The story includes her correspondence with him until he disappears in action under suspicious circumstances. The fragility of Fred's marriage and the loss of Harriet's fiancé add love interests to all the other intrigues.

A tangle of relationships around the impossible task of setting up a salmon fishery in the Yemeni desert drives the story. Sheikh Muhammad, a man of peace and hope, inspires people to try the impossible. But he also appears on the hit lists of Arabs who see him as a heretic and a friend of the West and its ways.

The sheikh has an estate in Scotland where he loves to fish. Readers go along to the beautiful Scottish highlands, with its mist and greenness, before returning to the stark beauty of the Yemeni desert, with its crags, chasms and sand dunes.

At last, the Yemen salmon project opens with all the obstacles overcome. But then there's a tragic twist that, knowing all that happened before, isn't totally unexpected.

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen is an enlightening, entertaining and tragic story with timely insights into Middle Eastern religious thinking and British attitudes. It's well worth a read.