The Bad Sex in Fiction Award is organised by the Literary
Review and is awarded for the most embarassingly inept description of
sex in a contemporary novel.
It was established in 1993 by the magazine's then editor Auberon
Waugh with the assistance of Rhoda Koenig "to draw attention to the
crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual
description in the modern novel, and to discourage it." The objection
being not that 'serious' authors sought to spice up their otherwise dull
novels with scenes of a graphical sexual nature, but rather that they
felt obliged to do so in a self-conciously 'literary' manner.
Past winners include Tom Wolfe in 2004 with a reference to
"otorhinolaryngological caverns" and Nicholas Royle who described a
female character as making "a noise somewhere between a beached seal and
a police siren". The winner receives a trophy which the BBC describes as
"a semi-abstract statue representing sex in the 1950s" and another source
as "an abstract statue representing sex in the 1950s", together with a
box of cigars.
The Roll of Shame
References
http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/badsexinfiction.htm
http://www.bookhelpweb.com/awards/badsex/winners.htm