Yay! Canadian sort of distinguishes herself by winning Bad Sex in Fiction Award

Author Nancy Huston

Auberon Waugh established the prize in 1993 to draw attention to the “crude, tasteless, and often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in contemporary novels, and to discourage it.”...

“Infrared” tells the story of a painful Florentine family holiday endured by Rena Greenblatt, a photographer who takes infrared images of her lovers at intimate moments.

“The Canon is part of my body,” Huston’s heroine confides. She isn’t coy when it comes to describing her encounters.

“Kamal and I are totally immersed in flesh, that archaic kingdom that brings forth tears and terrors, nightmares, babies and bedazzlements. The word pleasure is far too weak for what transpires there. So is the word bliss.”

Instead, she tries musical metaphors, bad Italian and images of “undulating space where the undulating skies make your non-body undulate.”