Bad Sex in Fiction Award 2009

From Literary Review:

ScreenHunter_11 Dec. 05 10.38 Jonathan Littell has won the seventeenth annual Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award, for The Kindly Ones (Chatto & Windus). The prize (a plaster foot) was presented by award-winning actor Charles Dance. It was accepted on Littell's behalf by his editor at Chatto & Windus, Alison Samuel.

The awards were announced at a lavish ceremony on Monday 30th November 2009, at the In & Out (Naval & Military) Club in St James's Square, where the 400 guests raised a toast to the winner.

The Kindly Ones, originally published in French, won the Prix Goncourt in 2006. It has sold over a million copies in Europe.

The judges used the occasion to praise an ambitious and impressive novel. They said: 'It is in part a work of genius. However, 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.'

Jonathan Littell was unavailable for comment.

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