Ms. AMY TAN (Author, "Saving Fish from Drowning"): I knew that I was going to be doing something different from all the books, that it wasn't going to concern mothers and daughters or sisters, and ...

A Buddhist parable provides the title for Amy Tan 's crafty fifth novel: A pious man drops his net into the water and scoops out hundreds of fish to save them from drowning. When they die on the ...

But in her latest novel, "Saving Fish from Drowning," Tan leaves that territory behind, both literally and figuratively, as she tells the tale of a group of American tourists lost in Burma.