Whitbread writer up for bad sex prize

Ethan Hawke's book comes in for criticism

An author nominated for a prestigious Whitbread prize has found himself on the less coveted shortlist of Bad Sex in Fiction Award.

Hari Kunzru's The Impressionist was named as a contender of the Whitbread best first novel award which carries a prize of £5,000.

The Bad Sex award just draws attention to a book carrying one of the worst descriptions of a sex act in a modern novel.

He is joined on the shortlist by novelist and critic Will Self, John Banville, Nicholas Coleridge and Nicola Barker.

Also included on the shortlist is actor and writer Ethan Hawke, star of Gattaca and Great Expectations, who has recently published his second novel, Black Wednesday.

Crude

The annual award is organised by the Literary Review, and was founded by the literary critics Rhoda Koenig and the late Auberon Waugh in 1993.

The aim of the prize is "to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it".

It is not designed to cover pornographic or expressly erotic literature.

Waugh founded the awards

An awards ceremony is held each year and, surprisingly, the winner generally turns up to collect the award, which is a semi-abstract statue representing sex in the 1950s.

Novelist Christopher Hart won the 2001 award for his novel Rescue Me.

Mr Hart, who is also the literary editor of the Erotic Review, was presented with the award by Jerry Hall.

The winning passage by Christopher Hart used an extended polar exploration metaphor to describe an amorous encounter.

'Twitching'

"Her hand is moving away from my knee and heading north. Heading unnervingly and with a steely will towards the pole," he wrote.

"And, like Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Pamela will not easily be discouraged. I try twitching, and then shaking my leg, but to no avail.

"Ever northward moves her hand, while she smiles languorously at my right ear.

"And when she reaches the north pole, I think in wonder and terror - she will surely want to pitch her tent," reads the passage from Rescue Me.

Previous winners have included AA Gill, Salman Rushdie and Melvyn Bragg.