Apart: The Enigma of Arrival by V.S. Naipaul

An introverted transplant from another hemisphere experiences a new environment through detached observation.

Imagine that someone has jetted off to a vastly different culture. The landscape there is surprising, the language and even the lettering are foreign, the residents have unfamiliar customs, and the pace of life is markedly slower or faster than what the visitor is used to. Some new arrivals will plunge right in, eager to befriend and learn from the locals, acclimating and participating as quickly they can. Others let fear or habit take over and retreat to some oasis of familiarity in the new environment. (You might call that the expat option.) Still others hold back with quasi-scientific interest, observing in a neutral spirit, becoming over time a knowledgeable outsider who remains apart.

That last option is dramatized in the book The Enigma of Arrival by Nobel Prize-winning author V.S. Naipaul. It caught my eye as an attitude that might be characteristic of some introverts: studying the local scene while being as inconspicuous and removed themselves as possible.