Literary Review's Bad Sex in Fiction Award 2010

12-2-2010 United Kingdom:

Rowan Somerville is the winner of the eighteenth annual Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award. The prize was awarded for passages from his second novel, The Shape of Her. He was presented with the award by Michael Winner on Monday 29 November at a ceremony in St James's Square. 'There is nothing more English than bad sex,' said Somerville, whose first novel, The End of Sleep, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. 'So on behalf of the nation, I thank you.' The judges' minds were made up by sentences such as: 'Like a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect with a too blunt pin he screwed himself into her.'

The other nominees were:

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen (4th Estate)
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas (Atlantic Books)
The Golden Mean by Annabel Lyon (Atlantic Books)
Maya by Alastair Campbell (Hutchinson)
A Life Apart by Neel Mukherjee (Constable & Robinson)
Heartbreak by Craig Raine (Atlantic Books)
Mr Peanut by Adam Ross (Jonathan Cape)

Last year's winner was The Kindly Ones, by Jonathan Littell (Chatto & Windus). ..Source.. by Literary Review

Author's insect imagery wins Bad Sex writing prize

LONDON – Author Rowan Somerville won literature's little-coveted Bad Sex in Fiction Prize Monday for the use of unsettling insect imagery in his novel "The Shape of Her."

Judges of the annual literary award said they were especially impressed by a passage comparing lovemaking to "a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect."

The animal imagery continues elsewhere in the novel, a tale of desire and memory set on a Greek island. One character's fingers are described as "tender enough to hold a tiny bird."

The prize, founded in 1993 by Literary Review magazine, aims to draw attention to "the crude, tasteless, and often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in contemporary novels."

Somerville, who was born in Britain and lives in Ireland, took his victory in good humor, noting that "there is nothing more English than bad sex."

He said he was honored to be shortlisted alongside authors like Australia's Christos Tsiolkas — for "The Slap" — and American writer Jonathan Franzen, nominated for the best-selling "Freedom."

Previous winners include such literary heavyweights as Sebastian Faulks, Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer and the late John Updike, who was awarded a lifetime achievement Bad Sex prize in 2008.

Last year's winner was "The Kindly Ones" by American author Jonathan Littell, which described a sex act as "a jolt that emptied my head like a spoon scraping the inside of a soft-boiled egg." ..Source.. by JILL LAWLESS