Flashermac Posted December 5, 2013 Report Share Posted December 5, 2013 The Literary Review awarded its annual Bad Sex in Fiction Award to Manil Suri for his novel “The City of Devi,†for a scene comparing characters in the throes of passion to various nuclear particles. The prize is awarded annually to writers of literary fiction with a particularly awkward description of the carnal act in their novel. (John Updike was awarded a Bad Sex Lifetime Achievement accolade in 2008.) It was established, according to the Review, 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 passage that tipped the judges in favor of Suri was the climax of a long sex scene that involved three characters: “Surely supernovas explode that instant, somewhere, in some galaxy,†Suri wrote. “The hut vanishes, and with it the sea and the sand—only Karen’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.†The shortlist also included passages from “Motherland†by William Nicholson, “the Last Banquet†by Jonathan Grimwood, “The World Was All Before Them†by Matthew Reynolds, and “Secrecy†by Rupert Thomson. Last year’s prize went to Nancy Huston for “Infrared.†http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/pageviews/2013/12/manil-suri-wins-bad-sex-in-fiction-award-for-‘the-city-of-devi’-scene Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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