Salmon Fishing in the Yemen - Paul Torday

I bought this book because of the great reviews it had had, and because i thought it was a catchy title! But - I have to say its the worst book i've ever read (and I've read a lot of books!) The basic plot is that the main character is a scientist to do with salmon, and a rich sheik wants to devise a plan to allow scottish salmon to live in the Yemen, so that people can fish for them. The story isnt told as a story as such, its pieced together from excerts of the main characters diary,emails between the characters, news paper reports etc. I found this very hard to follow! the story jumped around a lot, with one bit being about them still trying to figure out ways to get ...  Read the complete review

Dr Alfred Jones, a hen-pecked civil servant working for the National Centre for Fisheries Excellence finds his values compromised when he is instructed by his boss to collaborate with a property management company charged with fulfilling the dreams of a rich Yemeni Sheikh who dreams of seeing his passion of salmon fishing made possible in his homeland. At first Doctor Jones tries to get out of the job – after all there are good scientific reasons why salmon don't live in the Middle East - but when the Prime Minister's Director of Communications gets wind of the story he sees its potential as a source of good news rather than the votes-losing military fatalities that ...  Read the complete review

I discovered the book in the English corner of a German bookshop, the bright blue cover with the silvery fish caught my eye (they glow in semi-darkness!), the bizarre title appealed to me and the blurb ‘A wonderful novel’ convinced me that I should buy it, not because that’s a highly original remark but because it is from Marina Lewycka, author of ‘A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian’, a novel I appreciate. Not living in GB I didn’t know that Salmon Fishing in the Yemen had already become a top seller there and the Hardcover edition had moved to No 117 on the sales rank of Amazon.co.uk. A virtual friend has abstained from reading it up to now, however, suspecting ...  Read the complete review