Joan Collins announced the winner of the annual Bad Sex in Fiction Prize in London today, presenting the award to American-based Manil Suri for his third novel, The City of Devi.
The winning passage was the climax of a three-way sex scene between all of his main characters, living in curfewed Mumbai under the threat of a nuclear bomb.
Surely supernovas explode that instant, somewhere, in some galaxy. The hut vanishes, and with it the sea and the sands – only Karun’s body, locked with mine, remains. We streak like superheroes past suns and solar systems, we dive through shoals of quarks and atomic nuclei. In celebration of our breakthrough fourth star, statisticians the world over rejoice.
‘Take The City of Devi home to bed with you tonight and discover sex scenes that the TLS praised as 'unfettered, quirky, beautiful, tragic and wildly experimental’,‘ responded Suri’s publisher, Bloomsbury, who accepted the prize on his behalf. 'As Jane Austen observed: “One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other”.’
The Bad Sex Prize has been run by the Literary Review since 1993, and was the brainchild of Auberon Waugh. In 2008 John Updike was awarded a lifetime achievement prize.
You can read the shortlist in full at the Guardian, who polled readers to find out who they thought should take out the dubious honour.