A bad week for ...

David Guterson

The American writer won 'Britain's most dreaded literary prize', the Bad Sex in Fiction Award, presented by the Literary Review. The award cites a passage in Guterson's latest novel, Ed King, a retelling of the Oedipus myth, which includes a 12-hour sequence of what Guterson calls 'gyrations and five-sense choreographies' ending in a shower during which the mother 'abused him with a bar of soap'.

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