''Saving Fish From Drowning'' is a 2005 novel written by

Amy Tan Amy Ruth Tan (born on February 19, 1952) is an American author known for the novel '' The Joy Luck Club,'' which was adapted into a film of the same name, as well as other novels, short story collections, and children's books. Tan has written ...

. It is Tan's fifth work. The book is about twelve American tourists who travel to China and

Burma Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...

. The novel was awarded an honorable mention from the

Asian/Pacific American Awards for Literature The Asian/Pacific American Awards for Literature (APAAL) are a set of literary awards presented annually by the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association (APALA). The APALA was formed in 1980 "to create an organization that would address the n ...

Inspiration

Amy Tan says in her "Note to the Reader" that she drew inspiration for her work from a collection of "

Automatic writing Automatic writing, also called psychography, is a claimed psychic ability allowing a person to produce written words without consciously writing. Practitioners engage in automatic writing by holding a writing instrument and allowing alleged spiri ...

... messages from the unseen world." However, in an interview, she recants this explanation and claims that she actually made up the story of Bibi Chen, the protagonist whose story was supposedly passed along through automatic writing."Interview with Amy Tan"
on her website

Plot summary

The story concerns a group of American tourists travelling the

Burma Road The Burma Road () was a road linking Burma (now known as Myanmar) with southwest China. Its terminals were Kunming, Yunnan, and Lashio, Burma. It was built while Burma was a British colony to convey supplies to China during the Second Sino-J ...

from China to Myanmar, and the comic confusions that occur when they are kidnapped by a group of

Karen people The Karen, kjp, ပ်ုဖၠုံဆိုဒ်, my, ကရင်လူမျိုး, , th, กะเหรี่ยง ( ), also known as the Kayin, Kariang or Kawthoolese, are an ethnolinguistic group of Sino-Tibetan language� ...

who believe one of the American teenagers to be a prophesied savior; the Americans, for their part, are not even aware they are being kidnapped. The story is told through the omniscient first person narrative of Bibi Chen, the tour leader who unexpectedly dies before the trip takes place and who continues to watch over her friends as they journey towards their fate. The novel explores the hidden strengths of the tourists, set in the uneasy political situation in

References

{{Amy Tan Novels by Amy Tan 2005 American novels Novels set in Myanmar Novels set in China American comedy novels Ghost narrator