Literary Review



Literary Review is a British literary magazine founded in 1979 by Anne Smith, then head of the Department of English at Edinburgh University. Its offices are currently on Lexington Street in Soho, London, and it has a circulation of 44,750. Britain's principal literary monthly, the magazine was edited for fourteen years by veteran journalist Auberon Waugh. Nancy Sladek, who has been at the magazine for ten years, is the current editor.

The magazine reviews a wide range of published books, including fiction, history, politics, biography and travel. Contributors to the magazine have included Diana Athill, Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis, Beryl Bainbridge, Julian Barnes, Hilary Mantel, John Mortimer, Malcolm Bradbury, AS Byatt, Paul Johnson, David Starkey, John Gray, Robert Harris, Nick Hornby, Richard Ingrams, Joseph O'Neill, Lynn Barber, Derek Mahon, Oleg Gordievsky, John Sutherland and DJ Taylor. Literary Review also prints new fiction. Recently published authors include William Trevor, Claire Keegan and Nicola Barker.

Bad Sex in Fiction Award
Literary Review is well-known for its annual Bad Sex in Fiction Award. Each year since 1993, Literary Review presents the annual Bad Sex in Fiction Award to the author who produces the worst description of a sex scene in a novel. The award itself is in the form of a "semi-abstract trophy representing sex in the 1950s", which depicts a naked woman draped over an open book. The award was originally established by Rhoda Koenig, a literary critic, and Auberon Waugh, then the magazine's editor.

The given rationale is "to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it".

Winners
Winners of the Bad Sex in Fiction award include :


 * 1993: Melvyn Bragg, A Time to Dance
 * 1994: Philip Hook, The Stonebreakers
 * 1995: Philip Kerr, Gridiron
 * 1996: David Huggins, The Big Kiss: An Arcade Mystery
 * 1997: Nicholas Royle, The Matter of the Heart
 * 1998: Sebastian Faulks, Charlotte Gray
 * 1999: A. A. Gill, Starcrossed
 * 2000: Sean Thomas, Kissing England
 * 2001: Christopher Hart, Rescue Me
 * 2002: Wendy Perriam, Tread Softly
 * 2003: Aniruddha Bahal, Bunker 13
 * 2004: Tom Wolfe, I Am Charlotte Simmons
 * 2005: Giles Coren, Winkler (article)
 * 2006: Iain Hollingshead, Twenty Something (shortlisted passages)
 * 2007: Norman Mailer, The Castle in the Forest
 * 2008: Rachel Johnson, Shire Hell; John Updike, Lifetime Achievement Award
 * 2009: Jonathan Littell, The Kindly Ones
 * 2010: Rowan Somerville, The Shape of Her (article)