Man (Not) Fitting the Landscape : The Cross-Cultural Mediations of Otherness in V. S. Naipaul's The Enigma of Arrival

The main purpose of this essay is to investigate how V.S. Naipaul’s autobiographical novel The Enigma of Arrival describes the ways in which a transcultural, hybrid subjectivity is performed in the form of a series of multiple linguistic acts in which the narrator positions himself within an ever-changing reality. The dynamic pattern through which the protagonist’s subjectivity comes into being will be analysed in the light of the multiple relations with otherness that the novel stages at different levels. Also, the essay deals with issues of self-reflexivity, since The Enigma of Arrival deals with the development Naipaul’s relationship to writing and also with the composition of the novel itself.