Norman Mailer, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author who died earlier this month at the age of 84, has won this year's Bad Sex in Fiction Award.

The US writer, known for his biting prose and as an antagonist of the feminist movement, scooped the 15th annual award for his latest work The Castle in the Forest, published this year.

It is the first time the Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award has been given posthumously.

The judges used the occasion in London to pay homage to a "great American man of letters", saying: "We are sure that he would have taken the prize in good humour."

They saluted the "variety of his work, his innovative journalism, his combative spirit and his love of life" .

Mailer, who died of renal failure, won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize twice, for The Armies of the Night in 1968 and The Executioner's Song in 1979.

Other books shortlisted for the Bad Sex award included The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson, The Late Hector Kipling by David Thewlis, Will by Christopher Rush, Apples by Richard Milward, Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart and Girl Meets Boy by Ali Smith.

"So Klara turned head to foot..."
Read the winning excerpt (readers of a delicate nature may prefer not to click on this link)

Explore Books

• Book Extracts

• Book Reviews

• Books Group

• Audio Books

Times Recommends

• Superfreakonomics by Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner
• The Times picks the 50 best paperbacks of 2009
• Vincent van Gogh’s letters show the soul of the artist