'A man called Berg, who changed his name to Greb, came to a seaside town to kill his father…' Published internationally this macabre and terrifying novel made a reputation for it's Brighton-born author, as one of the the most original UK writers of her time.

Berg

Literature & Fiction

Quin, Ann

Literary

Marion Boyars

As innovative and abrasive as the very best of William Burroughs, Ann Quin's Tripticks offers a scattered account of the narrator's flight across a surreal American landscape, pursued by his "No. 1 X-wife" and her new lover. This masterpiece of pre-punk aesthetics critiques the hypocrisy and consumerism of modern culture while spoofing the "typical" maladjusted family, which in this case includes a father who made his money in ballpoint pens and a mother whose life revolves around her overpampered, all-demanding poodle. Stylistically, this is Quin's most daring work, prefiguring the formal inventiveness of Kathy Acker.

Tripticks;

Calder and Boyars

-- Ruth and Leonard's young female boarder, S., disappears under circumstances that suggest suicide. As the couple pours over her diary, audio tapes, and movies, their obsession with the enigmatic young girl takes over their relationship. Three combines laconic dialogue with poetic impressionism in an incisive exploration of the hidden emotions and sexual undercurrents of the British middle class.

Three (British Literature)

Dalkey Archive Press

A poetic book of voices, landscapes and the passing of time, Ann Quin's finely wrought novel reflects the multiple meanings of the very word "passages." Two characters move through the book--a woman in search of her brother, and her lover (a masculine reflection of herself) in search of himself. The form of the novel, reflecting the schizophrenia of the characters, is split into two sections--a narrative, and a diary annotated with those thoughts that provoked the entries.

Passages (British Literature)

"A man called Berg, who changed his name to Greb, came to a seaside town intending to kill his father...."
So begins Ann Quin's first novel, which has been compared to the fiction of Samuel Beckett and Nathalie Sarraute. Against the backdrop of this gritty seaside town, an absurd and brutal plot develops involving three characters--Alistair Berg, his father, and their mutual mistress. In his attempt to kill his father, Berg mutilates a ventriloquist's dummy, almost falls victim to his father's mistaken sexual advances, and is relentlessly taunted by a group of tramps. Disturbing and at times startlingly comic, "Berg" chronicles the interrelations among these three characters as they circle one another in an escalating spiral of violence.
A member of a group of British avant-garde writers that included B. S. Johnson and Eva Figes, Ann Quin is one of the best kept secrets of British contemporary experimental writing. She published four novels before her death at the age of 37.

Berg (British Literature)

As innovative and abrasive as the very best of William Burroughs, Ann Quin's Tripticks offers a scattered account of the narrator's flight across a surreal American landscape, pursued by his "No. 1 X-wife" and her new lover. This masterpiece of pre-punk aesthetics critiques the hypocrisy and consumerism of modern culture while spoofing the "typical" maladjusted family, which in this case includes a father who made his money in ballpoint pens and a mother whose life revolves around her overpampered, all-demanding poodle. Stylistically, this is Quin's most daring work, prefiguring the formal inventiveness of Kathy Acker.

Tripticks (British Literature)

Humor & Satire

"Quin's prose never falters; it's stunning." —The Paris Review
This new collection of rare and unpublished writing by the cult 1960s author explores the risks and seductions of going over the edge. The stories cut an alternative path across innovative twentieth-century writing, bridging the world of Virginia Woolf and Anna Kavan with that of Kathy Acker and Chris Kraus.
Ann Quin (b. 1936, Brighton) was a British writer. Prior to her death in 1973, she lived between Brighton, London, and the US, publishing four novels: Berg (1964), Three (1966), Passages (1969), and Tripticks (1972).

The Unmapped Country: Stories and Fragments

And Other Stories

“A man called Berg, who changed his name to Greb, came to a seaside town intending to kill his father. . .”
So begins Ann Quin’s madcap frolic with sinister undertones, a debut “so staggeringly superior to most you’ll never forget it” (The Guardian). Alistair Berg hears where his father, who has been absent from his life since his infancy, is living. Without revealing his identity, Berg takes a room next to the one where his father and father’s mistress are lodging and he starts to plot his father’s elimination. Seduction and violence follow, though not quite as Berg intends, with Quin lending the proceedings a delightful absurdist humor. 
Anarchic, heady, dark, Berg is Quin’s masterpiece, a classic of post-war avant-garde British writing, and now finally back in print after much demand.

S has disappeared from Ruth and Leonard’s home in Brighton. Suicide is suspected. The couple, who had been spying on their young lodger since before the trouble, begin to pour over her diary, her audio recordings and her movies - only to discover that she had been spying on them with even greater intensity. As this disturbing, highly charged act of reciprocal voyeurism comes to light, and as the couple’s fascination with S comes to dominate their already flawed marriage, what emerges is an unnerving and absorbing portrait of the taboos, emotional and sexual, that broke behind the closed doors of 1950s British life.

Three

A book of voices, landscapes and seasons, Ann Quin’s newly republished novel mirrors the multiplicity of meanings of the very word ‘passage’―of music, of time, and of life itself. A woman, accompanied by her lover, searches for her lost brother, who may have been a revolutionary, and who may have been tortured, imprisoned or killed. Roving through a Mediterranean landscape, they live out their entangled existences, reluctant to give up, afraid of the outcome. 
Reflecting the schizophrenia of its characters, the novel splits into alternating passages, switching between the sister and her lover’s perspective. The lover’s passages are also fractured, taking the form of a diary with notes alongside the entries. An intricate system of repetition and relation builds across the passages. ‘All seasons passed through before the pattern formed, collected in parts.’ 
Erotic and tense, in Quin’s compelling third novel the author allowed her writing freer rein than before, and created a work ahead of its time: her most poetic, evocative and mysterious novel yet.

Passages

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Quin, Ann. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Quin, Ann

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Quin, Ann. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Berg

Tripticks;

Three (British Literature)

Passages (British Literature)

Berg (British Literature)

Tripticks (British Literature)

The Unmapped Country: Stories and Fragments

Berg

Three

Passages