The Enigma Of Arrival - Opening

I. Jack's Garden

FOR THE first four days it rained. I could hardly see where I was. Then it stopped raining and beyond the lawn and outbuildings in front of my cottage I saw fields with stripped trees on the boundaries of each field; and far away, depending on the light, glints of a little river, glints which sometimes appeared, oddly, to be above the level of the land.

In loving memory
of my brother
SHIVA NAIPAUL
25 February 1945, Port of Spain
13 August 1985, London

First published 1987

Copyriught V. S. Naipaul, 1987

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