The Bad Sex in Fiction Awards, which has been a thing for the past two decades, proves that even good writers can write some truly terrible sex scenes. The notorious award, presented by the Literary Review, says its aim is to “draw attention to poorly written, perfunctory or redundant passages of sexual description in modern fiction…” And you will seriously not believe how bad the passages are, and, ironically, how great the writers: the nominees this year include a Pulitzer prize winner, this year’s Man Booker Prize winner, and a recurring favorite for the Nobel Prize! Here are some highlights from the prize that every prose writer dreads:
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Desert God by Wilbur Smith“Her body was hairless. Her pudenda were also entirely devoid of hair. The tips of her inner lips protruded shyly from the vertical cleft. The sweet dew of feminine arousal glistened upon them.”
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‘DD-MM-YY’ in Things to Make and Break by May-Lan Tan“When I’m about to come, I flip her onto her back and take off her underwear. I roll her nipple on my tongue and rub her clit with my thumb until her lips get slippery. I glide my middle finger in and out, then fold her legs up and push in. God. It’s like sticking your cock into the sun.”
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The Hormone Factory by Saskia Goldschmidt“I unbuttoned my pants, pushing them down past my hips, and my beast, finally released from its cage, sprang up wildly. I started inching my way back up, continuing to stimulate her manually, until the beast found its way in…she was as hot as boiling water in a distillation flask…”
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Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami (!)“Their pubic hair was as wet as a rain forest. Their breath mingled with his, becoming one, like currents from far away, secretly overlapping at the dark bottom of the sea….These insistent caresses continued until Tsukuru was inside the vagina of one of the girls. It was Shiro. She straddled him, took hold of his rigid, erect penis, and deftly guided it inside her. His penis found its way with no resistance, as if swallowed up into an airless vacuum.”
And we’ll leave you with this gem from The Lemon Grove by Helen Walsh: “Then he steps into her, furious. And when it hits her, it slams her hard and fast, as life once had.”
Wow. That is some truly awfully written sex. I think we can probably do better than that—want us to talk dirty to you? We promise that you’ll “became aware of places in [you] that could only have been concealed there by a god with a sense of humour.” Whatever that means.