Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen is a debut comedy novel written by Paul Torday and published in 2007. Torday was 59 when the book was published. It is based on his extensive experiences of industry and government, as well as his personal interests in salmon fishing and the Middle East. Satirical themes in the novel focus on the 2000s Labour government of Tony Blair and its foreign policy dilemmas. The novel won the 2007 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction and the 2007 Waverton Good Read Award. It was also shortlisted for the Newcomer of the Year Award at the 2008 Galaxy British Book Awards. Summary Dr Alfred Jones is a civil servant at the National Centre for Fisheries Excellence. A shy, academic type, he is not attuned to the increasingly dull lovelessness of his marriage and why his chilly financier wife Mary has seized the chance to work abroad. When a rich Yemeni sheikh and angling enthusiast, Muhammad ibn Zaidi bani Tihama, offers to fund a scheme to populate the desert wadis of his country with Scottish salmon, Jones initially dismisses it as impossible and preposterous.