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V.S. Naipaul

Naipaul always seems to be stirring up trouble with the kind of statements that make you want to roll your eyes and say “oh, Grandpa” — or they would, if they weren’t coming from an accomplished and influential author in a high-profile public forum. Maybe that’s why Paul Theroux wrote an entire book about how unpleasant he is. In a 2011 interview at the Royal Geographic Society, Naipaul made waves when he declared that he didn’t consider any female writer his equal — not even Jane Austen, as he ”couldn’t possibly share her sentimental ambitions, her sentimental sense of the world.” He added, ”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.”