Culture 3 min read
The Literary Award Nobody Wants to Win
Explore the infamous Bad Sex in Fiction Award, a quirky British literary prize that mocks the most awkward and cringeworthy intimate scenes in literature.
There are awards every writer dreams of winning. Then, there is the Bad Sex in Fiction Award—a prize from the British magazine Literary Review that even Nobel laureates fear seeing on their shortlist.
It is not awarded for the best sex scene, but rather, for the most awkward.
How It All Began
In 1993, literary critic Rhoda Koenig and editor Auberon Waugh conceived a prize for the most unsuccessful description of intimacy in fiction. They deliberately avoided explicit erotic prose, focusing instead on serious novels where the sex scenes were, in the judges' view, poorly executed.
The official goal of the award is to draw attention to tasteless, often formal, or unnecessary sex scenes in contemporary literature. The prize itself is a statuette of a nude figure atop an open book, styled in a 1950s aesthetic. Ceremonies were traditionally held at the In & Out club in London.
Ten Names in the Hall of Shame
1. James Frey: Won in 2018 for the novel Katerina. Judges were particularly impressed by a dragged-out scene in a Parisian bathroom featuring excessive physiological detail and the obsessive repetition of a single word nearly a dozen times in a row.
2. John Updike: A four-time finalist who never took home the main prize. In 2008, judges granted him a special award for lifetime contribution to the genre, noting that whether his depictions of intimacy were good or bad, he entertained readers for years.
3. Morrissey: Yes, the lead singer of The Smiths received the award for his only published novel. Judges were finished off by an excessive metaphor for a specific body part that became a meme for years to come.
4. Sebastian Faulks: The author later commissioned to write a James Bond novel took the prize in 1998 for Charlotte Gray. Judges were puzzled by how the character's physical sensation was described through detached, almost philosophical reasoning rather than the scene itself.
5. Tom Wolfe: One of the foremost American novelists of the 20th century received the prize in 2004 for I Am Charlotte Simmons. A paragraph built on the obsessive rhythmic repetition of a single movement verb, used over and over without pause, proved to be the deciding factor.
6. Rachel Johnson: The British writer and journalist beat Updike to the punch in his final chance at the prize in 2008. The judges were moved by a blend of clichés and unexpected animal comparisons. She accepted the prize with humor.
7. Ben Okri: The Booker Prize winner received the Bad Sex Award in 2014 for The Age of Magic. A scene where physical intimacy suddenly shifted into a description of the universe and the stars seemed excessive to the judges for such an intimate moment.
8. Nancy Huston: A Canadian writer and the 2012 laureate for her novel Infrared. The award came from a phrase about characters fully immersed in the flesh; judges felt the imagery was too abstract and detached from the actual physical scene.
9. Didier Decoin and John Harvey: In 2019, the jury could not choose one winner and split the prize between the two, admitting that they had to re-vote. This was the final year the prize was officially presented.
10. Rowan Somerville: Perhaps not the biggest name on the list, but the winner of 2010 provided arguably the most quoted metaphor in the award’s history, comparing the act of intimacy to an entomologist pinning a beetle with a blunt needle.
The Gender Balance
Among the early winners of the award, there were notably fewer women than men—a point regularly noted by journalists. Among the few women to receive the prize are Nancy Huston and Rachel Johnson. Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, was shortlisted but never won.
As you navigate your own romantic stories, remember that communication and mutual comfort are key.
Why Not Everyone Is a Fan
A segment of the literary community finds the award unfair, arguing that judges evaluate a paragraph stripped of context rather than how the scene functions within the novel as a whole. Since 2020, the ceremony has effectively ceased; it was initially cancelled without detailed explanation, and although there were promises of a return, they remain unfulfilled.
More than thirty years after its founding, the award continues to do exactly what it was created for: annually reminding even the world's most titled writers that describing intimacy well is much harder than it seems.
