The Enigma of Arrival
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The Enigma of Arrival: A Novel in Five Sections is a 1987 novel by Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul.
Mostly an autobiography, the book is composed of five sections that reflect the growing familiarity and changing perceptions of Naipaul upon his arrival in various countries after leaving his native Trinidad and Tobago.
Most of the action of the novel takes place in Wiltshire, England, where Naipaul has rented a cottage in the countryside. On first arriving, he sees the area surrounding his cottage as a frozen piece of history, unchanged for hundreds of years. However, as his stay at the cottage where he is working on another book becomes extended, he begins to see the area for what it is: a constantly changing place with ordinary people simply living lives away from the rest of the world. This causes Naipaul to reflect upon the nature of our perceptions of our surroundings and how much these perceptions are affected by our own pre-conceptions of a place.
He re-examines his own emigration from Trinidad to New York City, and his subsequent removal to England and Oxford. Naipaul's narration illustrates the growing understanding of his place in this new environment and the intricate relations of the people and the land around them.
His landlord is modelled on his real-life landlord Stephen Tennant (1906–1987), a 1920s socialite and a "bright young thing" who is also the model for the Hon. Miles Malpractice in novels by Evelyn Waugh and for Cedric Hampton in Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford. Naipaul rented a cottage at Tennant's Wilsford House estate, north of Salisbury.[1]
References
- ^ "Wilsford cum Lake". Wiltshire Community History. Wiltshire Council. Retrieved 10 February 2016.
External links
- Salman Rushdie, "A sad pastoral" (review), The Guardian, 13 May 1987.
- "Return to Enigma," LA Review of Books, June 2018
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- The Mystic Masseur
- The Suffrage of Elvira
- Miguel Street
- A House for Mr Biswas
- Mr Stone and the Knights Companion
- A Flag on the Island
- The Mimic Men
- In a Free State
- Guerrillas
- A Bend in the River
- The Enigma of Arrival
- A Way in the World
- Half a Life
- Magic Seeds
- The Middle Passage
- An Area of Darkness
- The Loss of El Dorado
- The Overcrowded Barracoon and Other Articles
- India: A Wounded Civilization
- A Congo Diary
- The Return of Eva Peron and the Killings in Trinidad
- Among the Believers
- Finding the Centre
- Reading and Writing
- A Turn in the South
- India: A Million Mutinies Now
- Bombay
- Beyond Belief
- Between Father and Son
- The Writer and the World
- Literary Occasions
- A Writer's People
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