"Una had stretched out on the bed of the guillotine; I lifted the lunette, made her put her head through it, and closed it on her long neck, after carefully lifting her heavy hair."

"She was panting. I tied her hands behind her back with my belt, then raised her skirt. I didn't even bother to lower her panties...." Etc. etc. "... Leaning over the lunette, my own neck beneath the blade, I whispered to her: 'I'm going to pull the lever, I'm going to let the blade drop.' She begged me: 'Please, fuck my pussy.' - 'No.' I came suddenly, a jolt that emptied my head like a spoon scraping the inside of a soft-boiled egg."

Ha ha ha. And with that, Jonathan Littell ("The Kindly Ones") has snatched this year's Bad Sex in Fiction Award.

Read all the finalists — and laugh (or climax!) — here. Be charitable. It's really very hard to write about sex. Have you ever tried to do it? If you have, I hope you had the sense to laugh at yourself.

ADDED: From the BBC::

Over the years, some of literature's most glittering names have competed for one of its least coveted prizes.

Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, John Updike and Philip Roth are titans among novelists, generally acclaimed for their representations of every kind of human experience - except one.

When writing about sex, says the Literary Review magazine, their standards slip.

Here's the Roth passage that got noticed this year (from "The Humbling"):

He had let Pegeen appoint herself ringmaster and would not participate until summoned. He would watch without interfering. First Pegeen stepped into the contraption, adjusted and secured the leather straps...

It was a big year for devices, apparently. Again, I'm cutting the most NSFW parts, which you can click over and read.

... There was something primitive about it now, this woman-on-woman violence, as though, in the room filled with shadows, Pegeen were a magical composite of shaman, acrobat, and animal. It was as if she were wearing a mask on her genitals, a weird totem mask, that made her into what she was not and was not supposed to be. She could as well have been a crow or a coyote, while simultaneously Pegeen Mike. There was something dangerous about it. His heart thumped with excitement - the god Pan looking on from a distance with his spying, lascivious gaze.

It was English that Pegeen spoke when she looked over from where she was, now resting on her back beside Tracy, combing the little black cat-o'-nine-tails through Tracy's long hair, and, with that kid-like smile that showed her two front teeth, said to him softly, 'Your turn. Defile her.'....

Oh, okay. I liked the coyote, though, Phil. That was good. And the "mask on her genitals," that "weird totem mask." That meant something.

IN THE COMMENTS: DADvocate wrote:

I've always wanted to write about nerd sex. Certainly, it would win the Bad Sex in Fiction Award.

"After the proper amount of digital manipulation of each others genitalia, I inserted my penis into her vaginal orifice and began rhythmic thrusting motions at a cadence I had calculated to maximize her arousal...."