The Winner of the Bad Sex in Fiction Prize Is . . . .

First-time author Iain Hollingshead. The finalists were discussed in a post a couple of days ago.

Hollingshead beat established writers including Irvine Welsh, Will Self, David Mitchell and American literary maverick Thomas Pynchon to the prize, which aims to skewer "the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel."

Judges were moved by Hollingshead's evocation of "a commotion of grunts and squeaks, flashing unconnected images and explosions of a million little particles." His description of "bulging trousers" sealed the win, the judges said.

"Because Hollingshead is a first-time writer, we wished to discourage him from further attempts," the judges said in a statement. "Heavyweights like Thomas Pynchon and Will Self are beyond help at this point."

Hollingshead, 25, who received his award from rock singer Courtney Love at a London ceremony, said he was delighted to become the prize's youngest-ever winner.

"I hope to win it every year," said Hollingshead, who receives a statuette and a bottle of champagne.

Now in its 14th year, the award was established by the Literary Review to celebrate truly cringe-worthy erotic writing.

"It's mixed metaphors, embarrassing fumbling. It's the redundancy of the scene in an otherwise good novel," said assistant editor Philip Womack.

This year's runner-up was Tim Willcocks's medieval action novel The Religion, for a scene in which characters grapple passionately in a forge "across the cold steel face of the anvil."

"In the pit of his stomach a cauldron boiled and some seething and nameless brew rose up through his spine and filled his brain with the Devil's Fire," Willcocks writes.

There's a bit more to read here.

Tags: Bad Sex in Fiction Prize, Iain Hollingshead, Twenty Something