Author Rachel Johnson bags 'Bad Sex in Fiction' award

London, Nov 26 (ANI): Author Rachel Johnson, sister of London Mayor Boris Johnson, has bagged this year's Bad Sex in Fiction Award. Johnson received the award in the ceremony, held at London's In and Out club, for an excerpt from her satirical novel Shire Hell.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Updike won the lifetime achievement award at the ceremony, laid on by Literary Review Magazine.

The ceremony celebrates crude, tasteless or ridiculous sexual passages in modern literature.

Johnson accepted her prize with good humour, saying it was an 'absolute honour' to win, taking her place alongside former winners including Norman Mailer, Sebastian Faulks and Tom Wolfe.

"I'm not feeling remotely grumpy about it. I know that men with literary reputations to polish might find it insulting," the Telegraph quoted her, as saying.

"But if you've had a book published in the year any attention is welcome, even if it's slightly dubious attention of this sort," she added.

Her winning passage includes the lines: "I find myself gripping his ears and tugging at the locks curling over them, beside myself, and a strange animal noise escapes from me as the mounting, Wagnerian crescendo overtakes me.

"I really do hope at this point that all the Spodders are, as requested, attending the meeting about slug clearance..."

Johnson beat a shortlist of writers including Isabel Fonseca, Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho and James Buchan.

Tom Fleming, the magazine's deputy editor, said: "All the passages this year are equally awful, but Rachel Johnson's struck us because of the mixture of cliche and euphemism. There were a couple of really bad animal metaphors in there." (ANI)