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The Bad Sex in Fiction Award goes to David Guterson’s “Ed King”

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Tribune Newspapers

David Guterson has won 2011’s Bad Sex in Fiction Award. The tongue-in-cheek prize was presented at a ceremony in London on Tuesday. As in years past, the award-winning author was not in attendance.

Guterson was awarded the prize for writing a marathon sexual encounter between a son and his mother in “Ed King.” The novel is a modern retelling of the Oedpius story. Guterson, who is best known for the novel “Snow Falling on Cedars,” took the award in stride. “Oedipus practically invented bad sex, so I’m not in the least bit surprised,” he wrote, Bloomberg reports.

The Bad Sex In Fiction Prize is presented by the Literary Review, a British journal. Past winners have included Tom Wolfe, Jonathan Littell and Norman Mailer.

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“Nobody wants to win that award,” Margaret Atwood told the Los Angeles Times in 2009. “It’s very easy to overwrite a sex scene, at which point it becomes comic.”

Others in the running for the 2011 Bad Sex in Fiction Award were Haruki Murakami’s “1Q84,” Chris Adrian’s “The Great Night,” Lee Child’s “The Affair,” James Frey for “The Final Testament of the Holy Bible” and Stephen King’s “11/22/63.”

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