The Hindu : Front Page : Naipaul admits “cruelty” to his first wife

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Saturday, Mar 22, 2008
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Naipaul admits “cruelty” to his first wife

Hasan Suroor

LONDON: A new and authorised biography of V.S. Naipaul, in which he is said to admit that his “cruelty” to his first wife Patricia as she fought cancer may have hastened her death, is likely to provide more ammunition to the controversial Nobel Laureate’s legion of critics.

Sir Vidia, who is portrayed by his biographer Patrick French as a “cruel” and “selfish” man, who visited prostitutes while his wife lay dying, has already set tongues wagging after he told an interviewer that he may not read the biography titled “The World Is What it Is.”

His statement has surprised critics who pointed out that Sir Vidia himself chose Mr. French as his biographer and provided him unprecedented access to his papers, including Patricia’s private diaries.

The Daily Telegraph, which will serialise the book from Saturday , commented that it “laid bare” Sir Vidia’s “shocking treatment of those closest to him” portraying him as “emotionally immature, selfish and self-pitying.”

Sir Vidia is quoted as admitting that the disclosure that he visited prostitutes while his wife was battling with cancer might have hastened her death.

“I think that consumed her. I think she had all the relapses and everything after that. She suffered. It could be said that I killed her. It could be said that I feel a little bit that way,” he reportedly told Mr. French.

“Absolute rubbish”

The book is said to paint a picture of a “bleak, loveless marriage” largely because of Sir Vidia’s extra-marital affair with Margaret Gooding, a married Anglo-Argentinian whom he met in 1972. Patricia was aware of the affair and although Sir Vidia claimed that she accepted the situation, his sister Savi is quoted as dismissing the claim as “absolute rubbish.”

Sir Vidia abandoned Ms. Gooding after he met a Pakistani journalist Nadira Khanum Alvi, his present wife.

The buzz is that Sir Vidia is likely to fall out with his biographer as “spectacularly” as he did with his long-time friend Paul Theroux who then went on to write a book describing the 75-year-old writer as “almost unloveable, mean and cruel.”

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