The 2012 Bad Sex in Fiction Award goes to Nancy Huston

England’s most feared literary prize was announced Tuesday night -- “awarded� wouldn’t be the right word, because the winning author was not in attendance. That was Nancy Huston, who took the 2012 Bad Sex in Fiction Award for her novel “Infrared.�

The Bad Sex in Fiction Award is presented by the Literary Review, the longstanding British literary journal. While all in good fun, it’s not a prize that authors hope to win. Although Huston did beat out some pretty stiff competition, including American author Tom Wolfe -- as a prior winner, he was considered by some to be a favorite.

The judges cited “Infrared� passages such as “flesh, that archaic kingdom that brings forth tears and terrors, nightmares, babies and bedazzlements,� and a long one building to a climax of “undulating space where the undulating skies make your non-body undulate.�

Huston has plenty of weighty literary awards to counteract this one: She has won the Prix Goncourt, France’s highest literary honor; been a finalist for the Orange Prize; received the Canadian Governor’s General Award for Fiction in French; and been awarded the Prix Femina. Although she was not at the Bad Sex awards, she seemed to take the prize in stride.

In a statement, she said she hoped the win would “incite thousands of British women to take close-up photos of their lovers’ bodies in all states of array and disarray.�

Previous winners of the Bad Sex in Fiction award include Norman Mailer, Jonathan Littell and Sebastian Faulks. In 2008, John Updike was given the lifetime achievement award.

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