Bad Sex Award

The Literary Review has awarded the 2009 bad sex in fiction award to Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones.

The Kindly Ones, which tells the story of the Holocaust through the eyes of one of the executioners, beat off stiff competition from a stellar shortlist that included entries from Philip Roth, John Banville, Paul Theroux and the literary rock star Nick Cave.

Har har.

The judges paid tribute to the novel’s breadth and ambition, calling it “in part, a work of genius”.

“However,” the citation continued, “a mythologically inspired passage and lines such as ‘I came suddenly, a jolt that emptied my head like a spoon scraping the inside of a soft-boiled egg’ clinched the award for The Kindly Ones. We hope he takes it in good humour.”

There’s more from the winner, as well as passages from the other nominees, on the prize shortlist.