Just a note here. I've read this book twice and have an observation that I haven't come across elsewhere. In short, it's that there is a vertiginous aspect to Naipaul's descriptions of landscape here. I never have a stable sense of the world around the narrator, but one that is always off-kilter, if not spinning. This is something that I've not come across in Naipaul's other books, most of which I've read. I'm thinking now it may just be a function of over-description, in which case the attentive reader is overloaded with stimuli. So a mysterious but very good book which I recommend.

Later note: Yes, It is over-description, which creates a defamiliarizing or alienating effect on the reader. To the best of my knowledge, it was first described as an aspect of Russian Formalism.

This is a mixed book. The opening scenes have some lovely depictions of snow and an old winter, which 'dusted the bare branches of the trees; outlined disregarded things.' For our Trinidadian narrator, this helps him make sense of his new surroundings. This sits within the canon of migrant literature, offering a transnational portrait of a lost way of life. The manor and village life of 1950s rural England seem to have haunting links to a deeper pre-industrial past.

For the small South Asian community in Trinidad, who came as indentured labourers on the old sugar plantations, briny water forge new cleavages in the sand and black gold transforms little allotments to prosperity. V. S. Naipaul feels an awareness of place in a beautiful crumbling estate, built by the empire's labour. 'we had started at opposite ends of wealth, privilege, and in the hearts of different cultures.' The rose-pink house gone to pieces is evocative.

His youthful night terrors of death are replaced by the aches of a man embracing middle age. I felt though as if I was waiting for some bite, after stumbling through his disorienting descriptions of landscapes and weather and detached depictions of neighbours. His denied desire for the woman he spied on in the ruined gardens is harsh, in her 'full lips' and 'narrow waist' he projects an exploitative sexuality... yet his own seems suppressed... and my sympathies slipped away from a man who could describe the beauty of nature but found only judgement for those around him.

I'd really recommend The Daleswoman documentary on Hannah Hauxwell for those interested in this kind of rural history - its a shame we don't get winters like that in the UK anymore :)

O mais autobiográfico dos romances de Naipaul, fala-nos do longo caminho que o escritor-personagem fez até descobrir qual era a sua matéria-prima de escrita. Chegado da periferia, envergonhado do seu percurso, tentou ser um escritor inglês, escrever como eles, sobre os seus temas, até ter descoberto que o seu "material" estava, afinal, no longo caminho que tinha percorrido até chegar ao centro do império britânico.

A perfect example of writing that feels very staid and traditional until, about half way through the book, you pick your head up and realize that it's doing something completely original. Not exactly fiction, not exactly non-ficiton (not exactly poetry for that matter), but filled with lush sentences that relay the slow, unstoppable movemements of a vegetative mind, Naipaul's, thinking about a particular place and a particular time so well that the meditation becomes about Place and Time, rather than 1980s rural England. A book that doesn't call attention to itself and doesn't need to: it's thorough, and so devoted to its subject that the structure feels organic (not always a good word to use I guess, but this book in particular seems to deserve it). The 20th century Walden: making your house in a world where everything is constantly being torn down. And like Walden, a book in which every word feels completely tangible and completely transparent at the same time.

Did not finish, I get it's a boring book I'm fine with that. I understand the author is racist and sexist but man I was not ready for this man to be such a loser. Actually pathetic human being, I got halfway through the "Ivy" section before I gave up on him.

I thought I would relate as another immigrant to a boring part of the UK. But this man takes his own personality defects and assumes the whole world is like him. He is the source of his own downfall and I'm getting second hand embarrassment at this wasted bitter life.

He's also a creep everytime he describes a woman.

Een bevreemdende ervaring. Het lijkt een vorm van decadentistische literatuur, maar het verliest zich niet in extravagantie, eerder in een poëtisch beklijvende vorm van traagheid en overbeschrijving. De eerste twee hoofdstukken zijn veruit het interessantst: in honderdtwintig pagina's beschrijft Naipaul het Engelse landschap waarin hij zich terugtrekt tijdens een periode van verdwazing ten opzichte van het schrijverschap en zijn leeftijd. Meticuleus ploegt hij elke akker, greppel, huis, grasspriet om, en vindt er in de kleinste details verandering, wat hij ook verbindt aan zijn ambivalente positie ten opzichte van de gang der zaken: verleden vult hem met een geromantiseerde weemoed, maar stilstand doodt (ook voor het schrijven), en verandering is onontbeerlijk.
Het meest unieke aan dit boek is dat het zich in een traditie van Europese weemoed inlijft, maar dat het geschreven is vanuit het perspectief van een inwijkeling. Naipaul is spitsvondig genoeg om tot het besef te komen dat zijn eigen komst ook een einde inluidt van een ouder Engeland (waarin migratie niet of nauwelijks tot op het platteland doordrong). Een boek over migratie, identiteit, verandering, en verleden. Hoewel deze bijna documentaristische manier van overbeschrijving het best interessante 'neurotische' doel dient van een halsstarrige nood iets onder taal tot stilstand te doen komen, is Het raadsel van de aankomst na de eerste tweehonderd pagina's jammer genoeg een lastig boek om door te komen. Wat er intrigerend aan is, is op dat moment al gezegd.

This is a really odd book. The style is likeable enough that I read the whole thing even though this would be a candidate for the most words ever written about next to nothing.

It's basically an autobiographical novel that focuses on the writer's existance in Salisbury, UK. He skips over the good parts.

The best part of it is a review on the back cover that: "like a computer game leads the reader on by a series of clues....." This is from 1987 so if you liked the Legend of Zelda or Mike Tyson's punchout, you'll love this maybe. Watch out for that piston punch, gotta dodge it in rhythm....

Recommended by my sister in laws uncle. So far- the first chapter was boring at first but then I realized it was absolutely brilliant. I don't think you can explain it. I think you have to read it to get it. I also think you have to be it. Like seriously, be it. I don't think I've ever really read anything like this, that was too smart for me and at the same time I intuitively "get". Good ol' VS Naipalm! Blowing me away.

Really beautiful, hypnotic writing.

a writer's journey - an exercise book of character sketches - human drama is everywhere.

Warning: this edition utilizes the tiniest of fonts. 318 Pages would be more like 350 pages were a normal size font to be used. The Brits fetishize economy. Nice cover though.

The watercolors of Rowland Hilder - worth a google - VS provides the backstory?

The garden of superseded things - old rusted ag implements and tractors. The story of my kiddom - so many pages describe my wanderings as a young lad over the fields of my great grandfathers. A homestead in NE Iowa going back to the early 1860s. For me the first sixty pages were max nostalgia. The only difference is that VS finds himself in southern rural England. Things that were mysterious to VS I took for granted, having grown up with them.

VS's estate even has the antique building sans roof, only the outer walls remain. The Iowa home farm still had the bare ground outlining the original log cabin; even more interesting were the bare stone walls of the first substantial home, a two-story stone house. Stone was the farm's foremost product; providing ample building material. Ancient ruins to a kid of ten.

Surprised to find VS describing changes in agricultural England that could just as well describe the perplexing changes that have occurred in my own Wisconsin; the strong-smelling slurry, the thousand pound hay bales. A landscape transitioning from family forty-cow herds to thousand-cow factory farms.

True enough that at times VS's 'Enigma' descends into a briar patch of words. Very few books maintain a five-star level from beginning to end. Patience will be called on to get through the pages of 'Enigma'. Worth it though - to me.

Though it may be an eyesore, there can still be a sense of loss when an old landmark (house) is torn down. I understand VS's concern; it has happened to me. Spring Grove, MN, the center of the universe; the old house where the Solbergs lived brought down, Main Street improved - my sense of history violated - a melancholy moment.

'The Enigma of Arrival', the most personal book ever I have read.

The Enigma of Arrival is one of V. S. Naipaul's masterpieces. In this autobiographical novel he successfully conveys to the reader the atmosphere of the English countryside through the meditations of the narrator on his original journey from Trinidad to England. Through the mind of the narrator we experience the fictional reality of the world-a world of Naipaul's making. Echoes from both James Joyce and Marcel Proust are visible in the narration of the novel. This seems a quiet book, but it is a powerful one. 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 England where Naipaul has rented a cottage in the countryside. The feeling of the place is palpable and the evocation of place is underlined by the physical effects and the history of the people and their artifacts. 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 preconceptions of a place.
As he re-examines his own emigration from Trinidad to New York, 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. The result is a magnificent read that is encouragement to savor other novels by this Nobel laureate author.

I remember listening to an episode of the New Yorker: Fiction podcast by chance while on a winter holiday by the sea in Apollo Bay, Victoria in 2018. I was there on solitary getaway following a period of burnout from my then teaching job. All I had brought with me was a few sets of clothes, my walking boots, toiletries, Jonathan Franzen's 'Freedom', and a fresh notepad and pen. I intended to have a writerly break: the romantic notion of staying in a popular summer locale but in the dead of winter. Instead of tourists there would be locals; instead of surf and sun, violent waves and grey clouds. It would appropriately set the backdrop of quietude for my internal processing to be given voice.

I remember sitting at the end of a pier on a cold, rainy day and listening to Karl Ove Knausgaard read the first chapter of this V.S. Naipaul book and being floored by it. Synchronicity has always been big for me, and I had only jumped on this podcast episode due to Karl Ove being a recent obsession of mine—I trusted his literary choices and was curious about his influences. What followed was the audible treat of his slow and deep Norwegian-tinged voice giving life to the extremely slow and detailed Naipaul prose that, piece by piece, layer by layer, unraveled his remembrance of his lived experience emigrating from Trinidad and Tobago to living in England and his slow journey to becoming a writer. Knausgaard read only the first chapter of the book in this podcast episode, but it stayed with me in spirit. I vowed to myself to buy the book at the earliest opportunity; though this didn't happen. Life happened, time passed, the book was forgotten. Then, years later in 2023, a hardcover first edition appeared in a local second hand bookstore, and the story was continued 5 years after it had begun.

At the core of The Enigma of Arrival is Naipaul's meditations on change, decay, flux. How we age, grow, and eventually die is the concern of our narrator. The landscape which holds us provides the setting for us to stamp out memories onto, though when we return to them, and as time passes, they invariably change. My memory of Apollo Bay was unique and lives in me like a time capsule. It is not a happy summer memory of beaches, ice-cream, laughter; instead it is cold, distant, alien—I look back at myself then, my aspirations to be a writer, my struggles with mental health concerns that I had not yet become aware of yet, my lack of vocation and direction. I see a drifter standing on that winter pier in 2017. And then today, in the heat of a humid Melbourne summer, closing the final page on the book and reflecting on Naipaul's growth as a human and writer, mirroring and accentuating my acknowledgement of my own growth in the last 5 years. For Naipaul, his acceptance and preparation of viewing change not as decay but as flux helped prevent him living in grief of lost things; though by the narrative's end grief catches up to him. That's what hit me most: we live like we are anchored to our homes and the people we keep close, though they will all change. One day, possibly sooner than I think, I could be walking through this very neighbourhood, pass my current apartment block, and have a moment of acknowledgement for all the life lived in this space, and for all the change that has occurred since my leaving. Though I am here, now. And that's what struck me most about this very unique novel, and it is something I've only ever before experienced reading Proust—Naipaul has captured the interplay between his internal process, memory and external setting so meticulously here that it is viscerally evocative of the change of time, place, and self in constant change. Realising that one cannot stop time or change, then the only thing to do is give yourself to such alterations with grace and a trust that you are a part of the comings and goings of "the ten thousand things". Such acknowledgements also mean that the natural grief that arrives at the ending of a chapter is to be expected, and should be allowed to be given voice to fully in the time it needs.

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For anyone interested, here is the New Yorker podcast episode:
https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/fic...