Image copyright EPA Image caption Morrissey also released a best-selling memoir Autobiography in October 2013

Singer and debut novelist Morrissey has won this year's Bad Sex in Fiction award for his debut book, titled List of the Lost.

The judges said they were swayed by an "ecstatic scene" involving two of the lead characters.

The book contains the lines: "Eliza and Ezra rolled together into one giggling snowball of full-figured copulation, shouting and screaming."

Morrissey was unable to attend the ceremony due to touring commitments.

The former Smiths frontman was also unavailable for comment but 400 guests did show up to toast him in his absence at the aptly named In & Out (Naval & Military) Club in London on Tuesday.

'Electric snake'

List of the Lost, which was panned by critics when it was published earlier this year, follows four Boston relay runners who are cursed by an old man in the woods.

Other lines include: "(They) pulled at each other in a dangerous and clamorous rollercoaster coil."

Morrissey's work triumphed over a varied shortlist, which included George Pelecanos's The Martini Shot, Joshua Cohen's Book of Numbers and Erica Jong's Fear of Dying, which included the line: "You raised the kundalini... like an electric snake in your spine."

Previous winners of the prize, established by The Literary Review in 1993, include Melvyn Bragg, Norman Mailer and AA Gill.

Last year the award was won by Ben Okri for Age of Magic (Head of Zeus).

The award's aim is to draw attention to poorly written passages of sexual description in modern fiction, and to discourage them. It doesn't cover pornographic or erotic literature.