The Story Archive

The Enigma of Arrival

V. S. Naipaul · 1987 CE · Novel · Caribbean · Contemporary

A writer from Trinidad rents a cottage in the grounds of a decaying Wiltshire manor and spends ten years learning the valley: the gardener, the car-hire man, the landlord nobody sees, the hedges grubbed up for bigger fields. Behind it runs the journey of his younger self from a colony to Oxford to a room in Earls Court. The title is de Chirico's, by way of Apollinaire.

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Attributes

Genre
PsychologicalAllegory
Theme
Memory & TimeExile & HomecomingIsolation & AlienationColonialism
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
WandererCreator
Plot structure
MeditationNonlinear / FracturedCircular
Symbol / motif
The EstateThe GardenThe Seasons
Conflict
vs Selfvs Society
Mode / tone
ElegiacModernistLyrical
Culture / tradition
Caribbean

Closest analogues