Nobel winning-author says he can always spot a woman writer

VS Naipaul believes women writers are 'unequal to him' As a Nobel Prize-winning author, VS Naipaul's writing about British colonialism has often sparked fury.  But the 78-year-old raised hackles last night when he dismissed all women writers as "unequal" to him and criticised their "sentimentality".?


The Trinidad-born writer said: "Women writers are different, they are quite different.

"I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not. I think [it is] unequal to me." Asked to elaborate, he said this was due to their "sentimentality, the narrow view of the world".
He added: "And inevitably for a woman, she is not a complete master of a house, so that comes over in her writing too.
"My publisher, who was so good as a taster and editor, when she became a writer, lo and behold it was all this feminine tosh. I don't mean this in any unkind way."

Speaking to Evening Standard editor Geordie Greig, Naipaul was asked if he considered any women writers his equal. He replied: "I don't think so."

The former Booker Prize winner - who has been described as "the greatest living writer of English prose" - has ruffled many feathers since he came to England aged 18 to study at Oxford University.

However, he appears to enjoy the controversy. Regular interviews with his authorised biographer Patrick French led the latter to describe him as bigoted, arrogant, vicious, racist, a woman-beating misogynist and sado-masochist.

Knighted in 1989, his writing angered many post-colonial countries when he described them as "half-made societies". Naipaul has also been involved in an angry feud since 1996 with American author Paul Theroux.

The pair's friendship spanned three decades but came to an abrupt end after travel writer Theroux discovered that a book he gave to Naipaul had been put on sale for $1,500.

They appeared to bury the hatchet after shaking hands at the Hay-on-Wye Festival over the weekend.?
However, at an Intelligence Squared event at the Royal Geographical Society last night, Naipaul said: "He gave his name, it was a great courtesy. If he hadn't I would have wondered 'who is this person who is shaking my hand?'

"Then he said his name and instinctively I said 'I am glad we can put an end to all this nonsense'. I shook his hand back. I was very glad to do that."

During a 90-minute talk covering all aspects of his literary career, Naipaul slated the work of Jane Austen, and said he "couldn't possibly share her sentimental ambitions, her sentimental sense of the world".

From London Evening Standard