Read Naipaul With Me

#APS Together to read The Enigma of Arrival

I made a quick watercolor of a scene from rural Wiltshire from a BBC documentary on VSN

This entire post is drawn from another Substack post from that wonderful literary organization A Public Space. It is a post about an experience reading together V.S. Naipaul’s The Enigma of Arrival. It is free and likely to be fun. Read more below.

The Enigma of Arrival by V. S. Naipaul was published in March 1987. In its citation for the Nobel Prize for Literature, which he was awarded in 2001, the Swedish Academy called the book a “masterpiece” in which “Naipaul visits the reality of England like an anthropologist studying some hitherto unexplored native tribe deep in the jungle.”

Join us starting Monday, March 23 to read The Enigma of Arrival, together with A Public Space friend Amitava Kumar.

A Note on APS Together

APS Together is a communal-reading series from A Public Space. Join us to read together—daily, imaginatively, miscellaneously. Each session is hosted by a friend of A Public Space, who selects and introduces a book to read together; and shares notes every morning, with fellow readers joining in. At the end of each book, we gather (usually online) for a finale conversation with our APS Together host and A Public Space editor Brigid Hughes.

A Note From Amitava Kumar

The Enigma of Arrival by V.S. Naipaul was published in March 1987. In its citation for the Nobel Prize for Literature, which he was awarded in 2001, the Swedish Academy called the book a “masterpiece” in which “Naipaul visits the reality of England like an anthropologist studying some hitherto unexplored native tribe deep in the jungle.” That was interesting, this reversal of the gaze by a postcolonial writer, but The Enigma of Arrival has fascinated me more for what the Academy had to say about Naipaul’s “inimitable voice,” disregarding genres and fashioning “a style of his own, in which the customary distinctions between fiction and non-fiction are of subordinate importance.” How to understand the book’s originality? More than one writer has talked about their response to a book that is boring and yet mesmerizing: How is the writer able to do this? I want to know. Maybe we can discuss the book’s beguiling rhythm: Is it that of nature itself, and the pace attuned to the time it takes for the narrator to heal. And all the detailed descriptions of the new landscape—is it because, as Salman Rushdie put it, “the immigrant must invent the earth beneath his feet”?

Reading Schedule

• Day 1: (March 23) pp. 5-14 Jack’s Garden

• Day 2: (March 24) pp.15-25 Jack’s Garden

• Day 3: (March 25) pp. 25-32 Jack’s Garden

• Day 4: (March 26) pp. 32-43 Jack’s Garden

• Day 5: (March 27) pp. 43-60 Jack’s Garden

• Day 6: (March 28) pp. 60-70 Jack’s Garden

• Day 7: (March 29) pp. 70-81 Jack’s Garden

• Day 8: (March 30) pp. 81-94 Jack’s Garden

• Day 9: (March 31) pp. 97-109 The Journey

• Day 10: (April 1) pp. 110-120 The Journey

• Day 11: (April 2) pp. 120-132 The Journey

• Day 12: (April 3) pp. 133-146 The Journey

• Day 13: (April 4) pp. 146-158 The Journey

• Day 14: (April 5) pp. 159-168 The Journey

• Day 15: (April 6) pp. 169-179 The Journey

• Day 16: (April 7) pp. 183-193 Ivy

• Day 17: (April 8) pp. 193-205 Ivy

• Day 18: (April 9) pp. 206-218 Ivy

• Day 19: (April 10) pp. 219-229 Ivy

• Day 20: (April 11) pp. 230-239 Ivy

• Day 21: (April 12) pp. 239-252 Ivy

• Day 22: (April 13) pp. 252-260 Ivy

• Day 23: (April 14) pp. 260-274 Ivy

• Day 24: (April 15) pp. 274-284 Ivy

• Day 25: (April 16) pp. 287-296 Rooks

• Day 26: (April 17) pp. 296-307 Rooks

• Day 27: (April 18) pp. 308-318 Rooks

• Day 28: (April 19) pp.318-330 Rooks

• Day 29: (April 20) pp. 330-340 Rooks

• Day 30: (April 21) pp. 343-354 Ceremony of Farewell

Join us on Tuesday, April 21 at 7:00 pm (ET) for a finale conversation with Amitava Kumar and A Public Space editor Brigid Hughes.