American novelist Norman Mailer, who at 84 died due to renal failure just last month, became the recipient of the annual Bad Sex in Fiction Award, which identifies authors responsible for tasteless depictions of sexual acts in novels.

The late author was given the award for his work on his literary description of the incestuous physical encounter between Adolf Hitler's parents.

The novel, entitled Castle in the Forest, compared the male sexual organ to a "coil of excrement" - a statement that presumably earned Mailer the award.

"It was the excrement that tipped the balance," the Guardian quoted Philip Womack, assistant editor to the Literary Review, whose staff is responsible for overseeing the judging. "That, and the line about Alois [the male character] being 'ready at last to grind into her with the Hound, drive it into her piety.' That was pretty awful."

The ceremony was held at the In & Out Club in central London, according to the Associated Press. Mailer was celebrated to be a "great man of letters," and that "he would have taken the prize in good humor."

Mailer was at first included in the shortlist of potential awardees, along with seven other authors. The final judging, however was between him, Ali Smith, and Christopher Rush, who reportedly came close with his literary depiction of Shakespeare's wife Anne Hathaway's encounter with a young poet. The novel described the young bard's description of Hathaway's frame as "rag[ing] and founder[ing] in the rising foam as I clung like a mariner to her heaving haunches."

This is reportedly the first time in the 15-year history of the Bad Sex award that it was given posthumously.