Eight authors, including Booker Prize nominee David Mitchell, best seller Mark Haddon and literary maverick Thomas Pynchon, were competing Wednesday for one of the world’s least-coveted literary prizes — the Bad Sex in Fiction Award.
Now in its 14th year, the award was established by Literary Review magazine to celebrate truly cringe-worthy erotic writing.
Winners receive a “semiabstract statuette representing Sex in the 1950s” and a bottle of champagne — but only if they show up at the ceremony. In the past, most have.
“It’s a very jolly affair,” Womack said. “It’s not meant to humiliate.”
Last year’s winner was food critic and novelist Giles Coren for a memorable passage comparing a male character’s genitalia to a shower hose. In 2004, the prize went to Tom Wolfe’s novel “I Am Charlotte Simmons” for sex scenes the judges called “ghastly … inept … (and) unrealistic.”
From the Yahoo News article; Guardian Unlimited also has an article on the subject here.