Manil Suri has won the seriously uncoveted annual Bad Sex in Fiction award for a scene in his novel The City of Devi describing a sexual encounter in terms of exploding supernovas and streaking superheroes.
The prize has been awarded annually by The Literary Review since 1993. Past recipients include Sebastian Faulks, Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe and John Updike.
The City of Devi, Suri's third novel, is the story of a love triangle set in Mumbai, which has been threatened with nuclear apocalypse.
The judges were apparently won over by the climax of an extended sex scene involving all three main characters.
"Surely supernovas explode that instant, somewhere, in some galaxy. The hut vanishes, and with it the sea and the sands - only Karun's body, locked with mine, remains," wrote Suri, who as well as a novelist is a professor of mathematics.
"We streak like superheroes past suns and solar systems, we dive through shoals of quarks and atomic nuclei. In celebration of our breakthrough fourth star, statisticians the world over rejoice."
Based in the US, Suri was unable to collect his award personally but a representative of Bloomsbury, his British publisher, accepted it on his behalf. Bloomsbury pointed out that some reviewers had actually praised the novel's sex scenes, which the Times Literary Supplement called "unfettered, quirky, beautiful, tragic and wildly experimental".
The other finalists included Susan Choi, Rupert Thompson and folk singer Woody Guthrie, nominated for the posthumously published novel House of Earth.
