Ben Okri Wins Dreaded Bad Sex in Fiction Award
Alert! Ben Okri has won the 2014 Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award, beating off competition from Man Booker Prize winner Richard Flanagan, Haruki Murakami, Wilbur Smith and Michael Cunningham.
Okri won the 22nd edition of the annual award for his 10th novel, The Age Of Magic.
The Nigerian author, who won the Booker Prize for The Famished Road in 1991, was in South Africa recently to accept an honorary doctorate from the University of Pretoria. In an interview with Books LIVE at the time he said, perhaps presciently, that one of the problems concerning the perception of the “African writer” in the rest of the world is “you’re invisible if you’re just writing well”.
He added: “writers write and tell stories and they tell stories about what they want to write about, not what the world expects us to do”, sentiments that he reiterated in his terse statement upon winning the dreaded award: “A writer writes what they write and that’s all there is to it.”
Last year’s prize was won by Manil Suri for The City of Devi. Past winners include Melvyn Bragg (1993), Sebastian Faulks (1998), AA Gill (1999), Tom Wolfe (2004) and Norman Mailer (2007). John Updike was awarded a Bad Sex Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008. In 22 years, only three women have been awarded the prize.
Read the excerpt that won Okri the award:
When his hand brushed her nipple it tripped a switch and she came alight. He touched her belly and his hand seemed to burn through her. He lavished on her body indirect touches and bitter-sweet sensations flooded her brain.
She became aware of places in her that could only have been concealed there by a god with a sense of humour. Adrift on warm currents, no longer of this world, she became aware of him gliding into her. He loved her with gentleness and strength, stroking her neck, praising her face with his hands, till she was broken up and began a low rhythmic wail. She was a little overwhelmed with being the adored focus of such power, as he rose and fell. She felt certain now that there was a heaven and that it was here, in her body. The universe was in her and with each movement it unfolded to her.
Somewhere in the night a stray rocket went off.
Full 2014 Bad Sex Award shortlist:
Book details
- The Age Of Magic by Ben Okri
EAN: 9781784081478
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- The Snow Queen by Michael Cunningham
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EAN: 9780374266325
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- The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan
EAN: 9780701189051
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- The Hormone Factory by Saskia Goldschmidt
EAN: 9781590516492
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- Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami
EAN: 9781846558337
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- The Affairs of Others by Amy Grace Loyd
EAN: 9781250041296
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- Desert God by Wilbur Smith
EAN: 9780007535651
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- Things to Make and Break by May-Lan Tan
EAN: 9781909585010
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- The Lemon Grove by Helen Walsh
EAN: 9781472212085
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- The Legacy of Elizabeth Pringle by Kirsty Wark
EAN: 9781444777604
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