The Enigma of Arrival by V.S. Naipaul (Penguin, £7.99 in UK) is a memoir in five parts that speaks intimately to an Irish emigrant. Naipaul grew up in Trinidad of Hindu background and after making the journey to Oxford as a scholarship winner, he settled in London; and then resettled years later in the countryside near Salisbury. Those departures and arrivals are recounted here, out of sequence, in a style of elegiac re-enactment and meditation. The subjects of Naipaul's investigation are how estrangement and loss slowly give way to familiarity; how local cultures interpret landscape and facilitate the bonding to place; and how newcomer and native are constantly engaged in rituals of domestication. This contemporary classic allows its wisdom to emerge in a muted and exhilarating style.