Bad sex award cancelled as public exposed to ‘too many bad things in 2020’

Prize for ‘unconvincing, perfunctory, embarrassing or redundant passages of a sexual nature in sound literary novels’ will resume in 2021

Novelists who have strayed into the more intimate realms in their recent writing will have breathed a sigh of relief on Tuesday after the Literary Review announced it had cancelled this year’s Bad sex in fiction awards.

The prize was set up in 1993 by Auberon Waugh, with the intention of “gently dissuading authors and publishers from including unconvincing, perfunctory, embarrassing or redundant passages of a sexual nature in otherwise sound literary novels”. Last year it was jointly won by Didier Decoin for The Office of Gardens and Ponds, which included the passage: “Miyuki felt as though she was manipulating a small monkey that was curling up its paws”, and John Harvey for Pax, in which the characters “embraced as if with violent holding they could weld the two of them one”.

Related: ‘Mouthful by mouthful’: the 2019 Bad sex award in quotes

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