Morrissey’s “bulbous salutation” earns him a nod from the Literary Review.

Morrissey’s debut novel has the dubious honour of being nominated for the Literary Review’s annual Bad Sex in Fiction award, given to an author responsible for “an outstandingly bad scene of sexual description in an otherwise good novel.”

List of the Lost raised eyebrows on its release for one passage in question, which featured primary characters Eliza and Ezra engaged in an eye-watering, punctuation-free description of intercourse:

“Eliza and Ezra rolled together into the one giggling snowball of full-figured copulation, screaming and shouting as they playfully bit and pulled at each other in a dangerous and clamorous rollercoaster coil of sexually violent rotation with Eliza’s breasts barrel-rolled across Ezra’s howling mouth and the pained frenzy of his bulbous salutation extenuating his excitement as it smacked its way into every muscle of Eliza’s body except for the otherwise central zone.”

The novel – about a 1970s relay racing team and a demon – has received unanimously bad reviews, with The Guardian’s Michael Hann describing it as “an unpolished turd.”

Morrissey is up against seven other authors for the award including Erica Jong, Richard Bausch, Tomas Espedal and Joshua Cohen. The winners are announced on December 1.