Reclusive novelist points the bone at fellow prizewinner

New Zealand author Keri Hulme. Photo / Supplied

New Zealand literary recluse Keri Hulme has taken to blogging to criticise fellow Booker Prize winner V.S. Naipaul - calling him a "misogynist prick" and a "slug".

The author of The Bone People lashed out at Naipaul after he made remarks about Jane Austen and said men were better novelists.

Hulme, who lives in the South Island, published the comments on Beattie's Blog, the Observer newspaper reported.

"V.S. Naipaul is a misogynist prick whose works are dying. He accurately foresaw their relevance three decades ago: 'They will not survive me'. As he ages, his nasty behaviour - and judgments - become ever more wince-making. Many thousand women writers both outrank and will out-survive this slug."

Naipaul, who has won a Nobel Prize for Literature and is a knight, has been called "a master of modern English prose". He made his comments about women novelists last month during an interview with the Royal Geographic Society.

He won the Booker Prize in 1971 for his novel In a Free State. Hulme won the prize in 1985 with The Bone People.