Nancy Huston Wins Bad Sex Award 2012

'Oh The Sheer Ecstasy Of Lips And Tongues!' - Bad Sex Award Winner Announced

Author Nancy Huston has landed one of the literary world's least coveted prizes after taking the Bad Sex award.

She triumphed over figures such as Newsnight economics editor Paul Mason and veteran US writer Tom Wolfe for the toe-curling sex scenes in her novel Infrared.

Paris-based Canadian Huston is only the third female winner of the prize, fully titled the Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award, since it was launched in 1993.

Nancy Huston took the least coveted prize in literature

The 59-year-old, who writes in French and translates her own work into English, was unable to attend the ceremony at London's In And Out Club.

But in a message to organisers she said: "I hope this prize will incite thousands of British women to take close-up photos of their lovers' bodies in all states of array and disarray."

The prize aims to highlight and discourage "crude, badly written, or perfunctory use of passages of sexual description in contemporary novels", although overtly erotic literature such as Fifty Shades Of Grey is not eligible.

Huston's book tells the story of a family holiday endured by Rena Greenblatt, a photographer who specialises in taking infra-red images of her lovers during sex.

Judges of the award, created by Literary Review magazine, were particularly struck by one passage which included the lines: "Oh the sheer ecstasy of lips and tongues on genitals, either simultaneously or in alternation, never will I tire of that silvery fluidity, my sex swimming in joy like a fish in water, my self freed of both self and other, the quivering sensation, the carnal pink palpitation that detaches you from all colour and all flesh."

Thought Huston's sex scenes were bad? Check out these toe-curling real life extracts!

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