J M Coetzee: 'I regret to say I have never heard of Kraftwerk'." From the Nobel prizewinner's Q&A with readers of a Swedish paper
Special award for courage
"The really heroic thing about Nick Hornby is that he lives in north London and rarely leaves it . . . Every English writer needs their corner that is forever England — but only a few brave men choose to make that corner Highbury." Zadie Smith, Time magazine
Purplest prose
"Worms breed, and the handsome man with stunning blue eyes is host to a thousand sliding lascivious creatures, eating our flesh, turning us gradually into a sort of human jam." Norman Sherry on his subject's death in The Life of Graham Greene, vol 3
Worst prophet
"If a homosexual author should come anywhere near the [Man Booker] short-list, someone will make sure that he gets no further, on the grounds of frivolity, or narrowness of experience ('I thought the women were just unconvincing')." Philip Hensher's preview of the prize in The Independent, published a day before the homosexual author Alan Hollinghurst was announced as the winner
Critical putdown of the year
"Although de Bernieres shows no sign of realising this, his thematic material is stuff that has by now become threadbare after widespread handling in the fiction of the past 30 years or so . . . The folksy facetiousness much relished by magic realists is widely apparent. De Bernieres's taste for waggishness can be disastrous for his purposes. Beneath the whimsy, anything of substance is fatally submerged . . . Many characters are just stereotypes spray-painted with exoticism . . . The same points are hammered home again and again . . . Not since Flaubert's Parrot can a work have held so much appeal to the ornithologist. But — flabby and ungainly — the novel itself fails to lift off." Peter Kemp reviews Louis de Bernieres's Birds without Wings, The Sunday Times
Runner-up
"The thinking [behind self-help TV series] has now been applied to the tired world of British poetry, which has long been in need of a make-over. You need to pass the Nigella Test — somebody foxy and energetic to head up the operation. Thankfully, there's Daisy Goodwin, who has lovely dark hair and perfect teeth: just the person to encourage the use of poetry as a kind of mental flossing. The message is slick and pretty as an ad for Colgate: regular reading of poetry keeps you sparkling, even if it sometimes seems a bit of an effort . . . This pukey anthologising . . . shows dumbing-down in freefall." Andrew O'Hagan reviews Goodwin's Poems to Last a Lifetime, London Review of Books
The Pollyanna award for joie de vivre
"V S Naipaul seemed happiest when talking gloomily. 'Literature is over. I was wrong to think it was eternal and necessary. There is no room for it now. You look at a country like France and literature is finished. They are quite happy. They don't need it.
'What is happening today casts a diminishing light on what has gone before. Early Dickens is eternal. But very little else — a few poems here and there.' Surely he would make exceptions for particular authors — Thomas Hardy, say? 'I have never liked Hardy.' Graham Greene? 'I never thought much of Greene. His novels have rather faded, haven't they?' William Golding? 'Oh I have trouble with Golding, too. The writing is not good.' Evelyn Waugh? 'He is generally thought a very good writer of prose, but if you examine it, it doesn't stand up. Brideshead Revisited is extremely embarrassing.' " Interview by Edward Luce, FT magazine
Bad sex winner
"Slither slither slither slither went the tongue, but the hand — that was what she tried to concentrate on, the hand, since it had the entire terrain of her torso to explore and not just the otorhinolaryngological caverns . . . " From Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons, winner of the Literary Review's Bad Sex prize
Adam Thirlwell award for most puzzling sex scene
"I still had the brush. I gripped it tightly, even as Cherry embraced me. She was on all fours, with me lying beneath her. I let her hold me, then moved the brush to my crotch, pointing it upwards. I wasn't sure what I was doing . . . It was true that in my years without a woman my fantasies had been shaped by material created out of empty anger and pain, and it was an attempt to legitimise (in the sense of seeking a female response to) this form of frustrated lust that I acted now, bringing my hips up so the tip of the brush handle pressed against Cherry's labia." From Cherry by Matt Thorne
Most compatible literary couple
"I must do some Christmas shopping. My girlfriend gave me her list last week, which read: PURPLE WELLINGTONS, NEW CARDIGAN, BIRD OF PREY, MOPED. Which, if any of these, will I buy? I am hoping she will go to the Sotheby's sale and buy me a copy of John Donne's Sermons." From jeanettewinterson.com
Hapless author of the year
"While journeying in [Graham Greene's] footsteps, [Norman]Sherry contracted gangrene of the intestine in Panama, tropical diabetes in Liberia, and went temporarily blind after a car accident in the UK. A mugging in Liberia caused him permanent ear damage. So worried was Greene about his biographer's capacity for catastrophe that he blocked Sherry's proposed visit to a Congolese leper colony. Even during this stay at the sedate Savile Club, he has managed to fall down the stairs. At the end of our conversation, showing old-fashioned courtesy, he wants to escort me to Bond Street tube station. I politely decline and cross the road cautiously. As I look back, I see him stumble into a passer-by." Interview by Stephen Moss, The Guardian
