The Enigma of Arrival Part 14

This man said, "Those other people haven't been here since 1845, you know. They've been here long, long before. You've heard about Columbus? Well, Queen Isabella opened this place up to everybody, provided they was Catholics. And that was when the French came in. They was Catholics, you see. Now, you hear about a place in India called Pondicherry? That was the French place in India, and that was where they bring over those Indians near Port of Spain from. So those Indian people up in Boissiere and places like that, they not like us-they've been here four, five hundred years."

History! He had run together the events of 1498, when Columbus had discovered the island for Queen Isabella on his third voyage; 1784, when the Spanish authorities, after three hundred years of neglect, and out of a wish to protect their empire, opened up the island to Catholic immigration, giving preference and free land to people who could bring in slaves; and 1845, when the British, ten years after slavery had been abolished in the British Empire, began to bring in Indians from India to work the land. He had created a composite history. But it was enough for him. Men need history; it helps them to have an idea of who they are. But history, like sanct.i.ty, can reside in the heart; it is enough that there is something there.

Our sacred world-the sanct.i.ties that had been handed down to us as children by our families, the sacred places of our childhood, sacred because we had seen them as children and had filled them with wonder, places doubly and trebly sacred to me because far away in England I had lived in them imaginatively over many books and had in my fantasy set in those places the very beginning of things, had constructed out of them a fantasy of home, though I was to learn that the ground was b.l.o.o.d.y, that there had been aboriginal people there once, who had been killed or made to die away-our sacred world had vanished. Every generation now was to take us further away from those sanct.i.ties. But we remade the world for ourselves; every generation does that, as we found when we came together for the death of this sister and felt the need to honor and remember. It forced us to look on death. It forced me to face the death I had been contemplating at night, in my sleep; it fitted a real grief where melancholy had created a vacancy, as if to prepare me for the moment. It showed me life and man as the mystery, the true religion of men, the grief and the glory. And that was when, faced with a real death, and with this new wonder about men, I laid aside my drafts and hesitations and began to write very fast about Jack and his garden.

October 1984-April 1986

By V.S. Naipaul

FICTION.

The Mystic Ma.s.seur (1957) (1957)

Miguel Street (1959) (1959)

A House for Mr Biswas (1961) (1961)

The Mimic Men (1967) (1967)

In a Free State (1971) (1971)

Guerrillas (1975) (1975)

A Bend in the River (1979) (1979)

The Enigma of Arrival (1987) (1987)

A Way in the World (1994) (1994)

Half a Life (2001) (2001)

The Night.w.a.tchman's Occurrence Book and Other Comic Inventions (2002) (2002)

Magic Seeds (2004) (2004)

NONFICTION.

The Middle Pa.s.sage: Impressions of Five Societies British, French and Dutch in the West Indies and South America (1962) (1962)

An Area of Darkness (1964) (1964)

The Loss of El Dorado: A Colonial History (1969) (1969)

India: A Wounded Civilization (1977) (1977)

Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey (1981) (1981)

A Turn in the South (1989) (1989)

India: A Million Mutinies Now (1990) (1990)

Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples (1998) (1998)

Letters Between a Father and Son (1999) (1999)

The Writer and The World: Essays (Edited by Pankaj Mishra) (2002) (Edited by Pankaj Mishra) (2002)

Literary Occasions: Essays (Edited By Pankaj Mishra) (2003) (Edited By Pankaj Mishra) (2003)

A Writer's People: Ways of Looking and Feeling (2007) (2007)

In 1932, V.S. Naipaul was born to an Indian family in colonial Trinidad. Attending Oxford in 1950 on a scholars.h.i.+p, his literary career began immediately after finis.h.i.+ng university. He has since published over twenty books of fiction and nonfiction, including A House for Mr. Biswas A House for Mr. Biswas, Among the Believers Among the Believers, Magic Seeds Magic Seeds, and The Enigma of Arrival The Enigma of Arrival. Naipaul's lifelong pa.s.sion for travel and travel writing began in 1960, and his voyages through the West Indies, South America, Asia, Africa, and the United States have been recorded in great works such as The Middle Pa.s.sage The Middle Pa.s.sage, his acclaimed India trilogy, The Loss of El Dorado The Loss of El Dorado, and A Turn in the South A Turn in the South.

Naipaul's numerous literary awards include the 2001 n.o.bel Prize in Literature, the Booker Prize in 1971 for In a Free State In a Free State, and the David Cohen Prize for a lifetime's achievement in British Literature (1993). Naipaul was knighted in 1990, and holds honorary degrees from the universities of Cambridge, London, and Oxford. His next work, The Masque of Africa The Masque of Africa, will be published in the United States in September. He lives in Wilts.h.i.+re, England with his wife, Nadira.

Through a unique blend of fiction and memoir, revealing the inner workings of one of English literature's greatest minds, V.S. Naipaul's The Enigma of Arrival The Enigma of Arrival charts a writer's course from Trinidad to the British countryside and back again, meditating on the act of the journey, the notion of home, and the way a writer perceives the world. charts a writer's course from Trinidad to the British countryside and back again, meditating on the act of the journey, the notion of home, and the way a writer perceives the world.

An Indian writer from Trinidad resides on a secluded country manor in Wilts.h.i.+re, where he observes the gradual but drastic transformation of the English countryside throughout the latter half of the 20th century. At age 18, he had left his birthplace of Trinidad to attend Oxford on a scholars.h.i.+p, arriving in London with an expectation to see the city with d.i.c.kens' childlike wonder. After some time, he finds himself an established writer, but is ungrounded in England and his journeys abroad until he settles into the picturesque dairy cottage near Stonehenge. As the narrator constructs with magnificent detail the story of the pastoral idyll forced to confront modernity, he reflects on his progress as a writer and on the geographies that have informed his work.

The Enigma of Arrival portrays a world of hidden English gardens and lush tropical plains, delighting the imagination while demanding the reader to consider anew how he observes the world around him. Perhaps Naipaul's most autobiographical work, the book provides a glimpse into the writing of masterpieces such as portrays a world of hidden English gardens and lush tropical plains, delighting the imagination while demanding the reader to consider anew how he observes the world around him. Perhaps Naipaul's most autobiographical work, the book provides a glimpse into the writing of masterpieces such as The Middle Pa.s.sage, In a Free State The Middle Pa.s.sage, In a Free State, and The Loss of El Dorado The Loss of El Dorado, and subtly investigates the ways in which the ending of the British Empire influenced the author's critical eye. Recalling Proust and Joyce, but written in a voice like no other, Naipaul's The Enigma of Arrival The Enigma of Arrival is a beautiful consideration of the connections between memory and fiction; progress and sacrifice; education and experience. is a beautiful consideration of the connections between memory and fiction; progress and sacrifice; education and experience.