'Bad Sex in Fiction' Winner Apparently Likes Science

Manil Suri's 'The City of Devi' takes the prize
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 4, 2013 8:15 AM CST
'Bad Sex in Fiction' Winner: Supernovas, Quarks, Nuclei
This photo released by W.W Norton & Company shows Manil Suri, author of "The Age of Shiva".   (AP Photo/Jose Villarubia, W.W. Norton & Company)

Let's see how hot this gets you:

  • "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. 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."

No? Not feeling frisky? Not surprising: The passage is from Manil Suri's novel, The City of Devi, winner of this year's "Bad Sex in Fiction" award, NPR reports. Suri didn't actually attend the award ceremony, but he doesn't sound bitter: Upon finding out Dynasty star Joan Collins presented the award, he said, "My one chance to meet Joan Collins, and I blew it!" Previous winners have included descriptions of "tears and terrors, nightmares, babies, and bedazzlements," a man who "smelled vulnerably digestive," "a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect with a too blunt pin," the imagined incestuous sex life of a young Adolf Hitler, and something about sex and soup. But not everyone thinks the prize is something to laugh about. (More literature stories.)

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