The Enigma of Arrival

infobox Book |
name = The Enigma of Arrival
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author = V. S. Naipaul
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country = United Kingdom
language = English
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genre = Autobiographical novel
publisher = Viking Press
release_date = March 1987
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media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages = 318 pp (first edition, hardback)
isbn = ISBN 0670815764 (first edition, hardback)
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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 four sections which 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. 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, 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, quite remarkably, is also the model for Sebastian Flyte and The hon. Miles Malparactice (both gay) in novels by Evelyn Waugh; by Tennant's death, the character of Sebastian had already been immortalised in TV's "Brideshead Revisited". Tennant is also Cedric Hampton in Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford.