Hearing about the recent devastation from Cyclone Nargis that hit Myanmar earlier this month has made me reflect back on Amy Tan’s novel “Saving Fish From Drowning“. This is travel fiction at its best. A delicious yarn about a group of tourists that travel from San Francisco to Burma and unwittingly get themselves kidnapped into the jungle. What makes the story even better is that the narrator is the group’s recently deceased (was she murdered?) travel director, Bibi Chen.

Aloft in her spirit world, Bibi rants. The military rulers “gave Burma its new name, Myanmar, and changed Rangoon into Yangon, the Irrawaddy into the Ayeyarwaddy. And thus, practically no one in the Western world knows what those new names refer to,” says Bibi. “Like the Burmese dissenters who disappeared, the country formerly calling itself Burma is invisible to most of the Western world, an illusion.”

The San Francisco Chronicle’s review of the book when it was first published in the fall of 2005 still rings true today. We as a country are not laughing much at what is in the news today so how much you enjoy this novel may have to do with how willing you are to be bewitched by a superbly executed, goodhearted farce that is part romance and part mystery with a political bent.

Cyclone Nargis Facts:
Today marks the beginning of a three-day official period of mourning for the more than 78,000 reported dead and another 56,000 persons missing. Damage to the country of Myanmar exceeds 10 billion dollars.

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