Saving Fish From Drowning [Paperback]

'An exciting, funny and thought-provoking story…a masterful novel.' The Telegraph

'One can only admire Amy Tan for striking out into unchartered artistic lands.' Sarah Churchwell, Times Literary Supplement

'Sparkling…a very funny book.' Metro

'Tan’s compelling portrait of a drowning humanity, pain seeks us out in our hiding places, however far we would run.' Anita Sethi, Observer

Praise for ‘The Kitchen God’s Wife’:

‘In this remarkable book Tan manages to illuminate the nobility of friendship and the necessity of humour. Give yourself over to the world she creates.’ New York Times

‘Once again this wonderful novel has extended experience. There is something dizzyingly elemental about Tan’s storytelling; it melds the rich simplicities of fairytales with a delicate lyrical style.’ Sunday Times

‘Tan is a prodigal with her talent. She weaves a dazzling web of unfamiliar colours, smells, tastes and landscapes.’ Sunday Telegraph

‘Amy Tan writes with passion and humour, making East and West mutually more comprehensible.’ Daily Mail

Praise for ‘The Bonesetter’s Daughter’:

‘Compelling…exotic lands and the past lend themselves to poetry. Tan turns the familiar but harrowing accounts of pre-Communist Chinese women into a romantic and intriguing tale. LuLing is a classic Tan character, a resilient survivor who, like Olivia in “The Hundred Secret Senses”, betrays someone close to her with dire consequences.' Times Literary Supplement

'A classic [told with] originality and humourt…this is a delicious page-turner that keeps you guessing, laughing and crying until the end.' Sunday Express

The highly-anticipated novel from the best-selling author of ‘The Joy Luck Club’ and ‘The Bonesetter’s Daughter’.

On an ill-fated art expedition of the Southern Shan State in Burma, eleven Americans leave their Floating Island Resort for a Christmas morning tour – and disappear. Through the twists of fate, curses, and just plain human error, they find themselves deep in the Burma jungle, where they encounter a tribe awaiting the return of the leader and the mythical book of wisdom that will protect them from the ravages and destruction of the Myanmar military regime.

Filled with Amy Tan's signature 'idiosyncratic, sympathetic characters, haunting images, historical complexity, significant contemporary themes, and suspenseful mystery' (Los Angeles Times), ‘Saving Fish from Drowning’ seduces the reader with a façade of Buddhist illusions, magical tricks, and light comedy, even as the absurd and picaresque spiral into a gripping morality tale about the consequences of intentions – both good and bad – and of the shared responsibility that individuals must accept for the actions of others.

Where does your title come from?
In Buddhist countries, you are morally prohibited from killing anything. Yet, some people find loopholes, rationalization, justification, equivocation – and that is evident in any culture and religion and government. In Burma, a fisherman might say he is ‘saving fish from drowning’ as he removes it from the water. It struck me as an apt metaphor for many things in life, both personal and in the larger scheme of things. The world is filled with the need to save people, save the rainforests, save the earth from global warming. When we, the outsiders, are confronted with so many problems – hunger, suppression, civil war, or malaria, for instance – we are thrown into having a moral response. It could be that we simply look away; doing nothing is a moral response. Or we jump in with our shirtsleeves rolled up. And perhaps, in the process, we knock someone over and injure them. So what happens when our good intentions don’t lead to good consequences? What if our actions wind up not saving lives but killing them? What is our moral responsibility then?

This book is something of a departure for you, in that mother-daughter relationships are not at the center of your story, although two of them hover at the edges. Did you make a conscious decision to move toward a different type of subject?
When I finished the last book, it was about six months after both my mother and editor had died. At two in the morning, immediately after I finished the last book, I started writing the outline for this book. I had been thinking about the subject of this book for a while – the disturbing questions about intentions. But up until then I had been writing about mothers and daughters because the beliefs I developed from my life with a difficult mother had occupied most of my thoughts. And I tend to write about the questions that continually haunt me. But my relationship with my mother toward the end of her life was wonderful, and usually writers write about what’s not-so-wonderful.

It may strike some people as odd to juxtapose light social and romantic comedy with the grim situation of the Burmese. Why did you feel these two aspects of the novel would work well together?
Humor and fiction are among the most potent ways to address serious problems and keep people’s attention on it. I realize that people read for entertainment and pleasure. That’s part of why I read. And if you present a book about obviously unhappy and irresolvable situations, many readers are going to turn off. The character Bibi confesses she much prefers the colonial stories of romanticism, the happy days under the parasol, throwbacks to a happier time, even if they are a distortion of the truth. She goes on to say that the books that are about Burma today are too grim. They start off with the horror, in the middle there’s another facet to the horror, and at the end there’s the complexity of horror. And you feel horrible after reading them. You might feel morally good that you took the time to read them and you’re disturbed, but then you don’t know what to do. You are helpless to help. Those books don’t move you to a spiritual place that’s uplifting and less stifling. Secretly, you set those books aside and don’t finish reading them. Some of Bibi’s sentiments were mine. I had to force myself to read those books. I knew I should read them. But that’s why I like the comic novel or fiction that transports me to another world. It’s subversive. It seduces me into reading about serious subjects. Comic novels over time have actually been very successful at pointing out moral, social, and political ills. Jane Austen was a master at jabbing at the absurdities and oppression of the class system. Comedy is really one of most expedient ways to get people to understand nasty issues.

You’ve said that this is a story about morality and intention. As one of your characters puts it, ‘You can’t have intentions without consequences. The question is, who pays for the consequences?’ Can you talk about that?
This is not about the kind of morality where I’m shaking my finger and saying you’re bad for what you’re doing or not doing. It’s really about the questions I’ve asked myself, about many things going on in the world and not just in Burma. And if I am asking these questions, maybe others are as well. There are no easy questions to things that are seemingly irresolvable. When I begin a novel, I don’t know where it will take me. I can’t start with an answer, a pre-made conclusion that I then drive into place with the hammer of my words. On a day-to-day level, consider how we are reacting to people suffering in New Orleans. We watch this reality on TV. I know people who cry every time they turn on the television and see a victim crying. They feel they can’t do enough or give enough. I’ve heard of others who don’t watch or read the news, because they would rather not get disturbed and ruin their concentration to work at hand. There are others who are holding benefits, getting others involved. Some have given five dollars because that’s what they can afford. Some give five thousand, because that’s what they can afford. Some go to work at disaster relief centers. So there’s a huge range of reactions. Now here is just one question related to that: If I feel nothing and do nothing is that better than feeling sad and then doing nothing? Is a deeply, deeply empathizing person better than a rich person giving a lot of money? There’s no answer to this. It’s a question that generates more questions.

What do you hope readers take away from this novel?
That they had a good time reading it, meaning they enjoyed it and thought it was worth the money they paid and the time they spent with it. And that they left it wanting to ask the same questions in their own lives about truth and intentions, about how truth affects intentions, and about where they find truth, individual and universal, and why it’s important to have both.

Born in the US to immigrant parents from China, Amy Tan failed her mother's expectations that she become a doctor and concert pianist. She settled on writing fiction. Her novels are ‘The Joy Luck Club’, ‘The Kitchen God's Wife’, ‘The Hundred Secret Senses’, ‘The Bonesetter's Daughter’, and ‘Saving Fish from Drowning’, all New York Times bestsellers and the recipient of various awards. She is also the author of a memoir, ‘The Opposite of Fate’, two children's books, The Moon Lady and Sagwa, and numerous articles for magazines, including The New Yorker, Harper’s Bazar. Her work has been translated into 35 languages, from Spanish, French, and Finnish to Chinese, Arabic, and Hebrew.