Bad sex award: shortlist announced for 'Britain's most dreaded literary prize'

Dubious honour lines up contenders for the year’s most ‘outstandingly awful’ sexual scene, with Elizabeth Gilbert and Didier Decoin among the nominees

Describing itself as “Britain’s most dreaded literary prize”, the Literary Review’s Bad sex in fiction award has unveiled this year’s shortlist, which ranges from Elizabeth Gilbert, the bestselling author of Eat Pray Love, to the acclaimed French novelist Didier Decoin.

Dreamed up in 1993 by its editor Auberon Waugh and critic Rhoda Koenig, the award is for “the year’s most outstandingly awful scene of sexual description in an otherwise good novel”. It is intended to draw attention to “the poorly written, redundant, or downright cringeworthy passages of sexual description in modern fiction”.

Continue reading...