Oddest book title prize shortlist gets behind cultural history of the anus

Reading From Behind lines up for public vote alongside works including Soviet Bus Stops and Paper Folding With Children

It might sound like a pain in the behind to read, but an academic tome about the cultural history of the anus is among the contenders on the shortlist for the 2016 Diagram prize for the oddest book title of the year.

Joining six other contenders on a list that also includes studies of Soviet-era bus stops and famous birdwatchers, Reading from Behind: A Cultural History of the Anus is “really trying to get to the bottom of its subject matter”, according to Horace Bent, the Bookseller diarist and prize administrator.

Related: Next stop, Siberia! The strange and beautiful world of Soviet bus stops – in pictures

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