Cave in running for Bad Sex award

Read some brief excerpts from the nominees

Singer Nick Cave has joined Booker winner John Banville, Philip Roth and Paul Theroux on the shortlist for this year's Bad Sex in Fiction award.

The annual prize, awarded by Literary Review magazine, focuses on "redundant passages of sexual description".

"Frankly we would have been offended if he wasn't shortlisted," a spokeswoman for Cave told The Guardian. He is nominated for The Death of Bunny Munro.

The award - now in its 17th year - will be handed out on 30 November.

Previous winners include AA Gill, Sebastian Faulks, Tom Wolfe and Melvyn Bragg.

THE NOMINEES John Banville - The Infinities Nick Cave - The Death of Bunny Munro Jonathan Littell - The Kindly Ones Richard Milward - Ten Storey Love Song Sanjida O'Connell - The Naked Name of Love Amos Oz - Rhyming Life and Death Anthony Quinn - The Rescue Man Philip Roth - The Humbling Paul Theroux - A Dead Hand Simon Van Booy - Love Begins in Winter

Journalist Auberon Waugh set up the award to "draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it.

"The prize is not intended to cover pornographic or expressly erotic literature, and is limited to the literary novel."

This year's 10-strong shortlist also includes acclaimed Israeli novelist Amos Oz and Jonathan Littell.

Simon Van Booy, Richard Milward, Anthony Quinn and Sanjida O'Connell - the only woman on the list - complete the nominees.

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