The Enigma of Arrival

by V. S. Naipaul

Overview

The story of a writer's singular journey—from one place to another, from the British colony of Trinidad to the ancient countryside of England, and from one state of mind to another—this is perhaps Naipaul's most autobiographical work. Yet it is also woven through with remarkable invention to make it a rich and complex novel.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780307744036
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/20/2011
Series:	Vintage International
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	244,541
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

V.S. NAIPAUL was born in Trinidad in 1932. He came to England on a scholarship in 1950. He spent four years at University College, Oxford, and began to write, in London, in 1954. He pursued no other profession.
 
His novels include A House for Mr Biswas, The Mimic Men, Guerrillas, A Bend in the River, and The Enigma of Arrival. In 1971 he was awarded the Booker Prize for In a Free State. His works of nonfiction, equally acclaimed, include Among the Believers, Beyond Belief, The Masque of Africa, and a trio of books about India: An Area of Darkness, India: A Wounded Civilization and India: A Million Mutinies Now.
 
In 1990, V.S. Naipaul received a knighthood for services to literature; in 1993, he was the first recipient of the David Cohen British Literature Prize. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001. He died in 2018.

Hometown:

Wiltshire, England

Date of Birth:

August 17, 1932

Place of Birth:

Chaguanas, Trinidad

Education:

Queen's Royal College, Trinidad, 1943-48; B.A., University College, Oxford, 1953

What People are Saying About This

Susan Sontag

It is the kind of book which, if the average American or English writer wrote it, would be superficial and very quick. But Naipaul's book is a work into which the writer has poured so much feeling for the language and for the possibilities of description. When reading that book I was thinking that this could be something so simple for another writer, but Naipaul brings this kind of seriousness to the project, this intensity.
(Susan Sontag, from Conversations with Susan Sontag)

Editorial Reviews

Discursive and ruminative, more like an extended essay than a novel, the intricately structured chapters in this highly autobiographical book reveal "the writer defined by his . . . ways of seeing.'' Naipaul, in his own person, narrates a series of events, beginning during a period of soul-healing in Wiltshire, circling back to the day of his departure from Trinidad in 1950 when he was 18, describing his time in London before he went up to Oxford, moving back to Trinidad after his sister's death: these journeys are a metaphor for his life. With beautiful use of detail recaptured from an extraordinary memory, with exquisitely nuanced observations of the natural world and his own interior landscape, he shows how experience is transmogrified after much incertitude and paininto literature. This is a melancholy book, the testament of a man who has stoically willed himself to endure disappointment, alienation, change and grief. Naipaul lays bare the loneliness, vulnerability and anxieties of his life, the sensibility that is both an asset for the writer and a burden for the man. He demonstrates this brilliantly by describing other peoplemainly his neighbors in a village near Stonehenge. Using these characters as catalysts, Naipaul peels back protective layers of memory, sparing himself nothing, revealing the mistakes and inadequacies of his life. The drama resides in small incidents: the death of a cottager, the firing of an estate's gardener; with each account, the narrative is spun more tightly into a seamless tapestry, a powerful document by a master of his craft.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

"Naipaul's finest work." —Chicago Tribune

"An elegant memoir, a subtly incisive self-reckoning." —The Washington Post Book World

"Far and away the most curious novel I've read in a long time, and maybe the most hypnotic book I've ever read." —St. Petersburg Times

"The conclusion is both heart-breaking and bracing: the only antidote to destruction—of dreams, of reality—is remembering. As eloquently as anyone now writing, Naipaul remembers." —Time

"V.S. Naipaul is a man who can inspire readers to follow him through the Slough of Despond and beyond.... Like a computer game [this book] leads the reader on by a series of clues, nearer and nearer to an understanding of the man and the writer. Few memoirs can claim as much." —Newsday

From the Publisher