Bad Sex writers named and shamed

Singer turned author Nick Cave, Booker winner John Banville and veteran novelist Philip Roth are among the writers to have made the shortlist for this year's Bad Sex in Fiction award.

Awarded by Literary Review magazine, the prize takes authors to task for "crude, tasteless [and] perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description."

Previous winners of the award, now in its 17th year, include AA Gill, Sebastian Faulks, Tom Wolfe and Melvyn Bragg.

Here are some brief quotes from some of this year's nominated novels...

JOHN BANVILLE - THE INFINITES

He takes a floating step forward...She puts her hands flat against his chest and leans into him in a simulacrum of a swoon, making a mewling sound.

NICK CAVE - THE DEATH OF BUNNY MUNROE

Bunny lies on his back on the sofa. He is naked and his clothes sit in sad, little heaps on the living room floor.

SANJIDA O'CONNELL - THE NAKED NAME OF LOVE

He slid his hands around her waist. Her skin was smooth and she felt sleekly muscled, like a dolphin might...

AMOS OZ - RHYMING LIFE AND DEATH

He feels the ripples in her skin, as though he has been transformed into a delicate seismograph that intercepts and instantly deciphers her body's reactions.

PAUL THEROUX - A DEAD HAND

Her hands were all over me, four hands it seemed, or more than four, and as she touched she made me weightless, lifting me off the table in a prolonged ritual of levitation.

SIMON VAN BOOY - LOVE BEGINS IN WINTER

For those final moments, we existed seamlessly - all memory negated by a desire that both belonged to us and controlled us.

After, we kept very still, like the only two roots of the forest.