Debut novelist Iain Hollingshead wins Bad Sex prize

Followup on yesterday’s post:

First-time author Iain Hollingshead scooped a dubious literary honour last night, winning the Literary Review’s Bad Sex in Fiction award for his novel Twenty Something.

Hollingshead beat established writers including Irvine Welsh, Will Self, David Mitchell and American literary maverick Thomas Pynchon to the prize, which aims to skewer “the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel.”

“Because Hollingshead is a first-time writer, we wished to discourage him from further attempts,” the judges said in a statement. “Heavyweights like Thomas Pynchon and Will Self are beyond help at this point.”

Hollingshead, 25, who received his award from rock singer Courtney Love at a London ceremony, said he was delighted to become the prize’s youngest-ever winner.  “I hope to win it every year,” said Hollingshead, who receives a statuette and a bottle of champagne.

Link to the full Guardian article