Memoir by a hindu indian who was born and raised in trinidad in the west indies. As a clueless youth the narrator, cherishing the grand ideas of becoming a writer, v. The enigma of arrival is a work that refuses to surrender to the deathly culture that encircled naipaul during the quarter century in which he contemplated its composition. He always thought he was a writer, but didnt have the appropiate background. A few years ago, vs naipaul said that he still thought of himself as a comic writer, and that his highest ambition was to write a comedy. The colonial experience and the adoptive experience resemble each other in this.
According to novelist ian mackenzie, that painting provides the inspiration for a notquite novelwithinthenovel one the nameless firstperson narrator dwells on but never writes about a visitor who arrives at an ancient port city and begins a journey of selfdiscovery that moves toward an unforeseen ending. It is a work of art that meticulously records an aging authors doubts concerning his personal health and the future of a world in decay, and one that finds a way forward in a blazing moment of redemption. The enigma of the arrival and afternoon in melbourne. Naipaul by his father, a journalist for much of his working life. Both may set off a neverconcluded search for an elusive identity.
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