There are plenty of reasons to dislike VS Naipaul, his talent notwithstanding. Now this: Asked whether or not any woman writer was his match, he predictably answered No, and then put in a gratuitous swipe at Austen:
I “couldn’t possibly share her sentimental ambitions, her sentimental sense of the world,” he said.
One wonders when he last cast an eye over one of Austen’s novels.
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