Ann Quin – författare

‘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 humour.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.

-- 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.

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.

This new collection of rare and unpublished writing by the cult 1960s author Ann Quin explores the risks and seductions of going over the edge.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.

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 that broke behind the closed doors of 1950s British life.

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. 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.

First published in 1972, Ann Quin’s fourth and final novel was a radical break from the introspective style she had developed in Three and Passages: a declaration of independence from all expectations. Brashly experimental, ribald, and hilarious, Tripticks maps new territories for the novel – aspiring to a form of pop art via the drawings of the artist Carol Annand and anticipating the genre-busting work of Kathy Acker through collage and gory satire. Splattering its pages with the story of a man being chased across a nightmarish America by his ‘first X-wife’ and her ‘schoolboy gigolo’, Tripticks was ground zero for the collision of punk energy with high style.

"ALISTAIR CHARLES HUMPHREY BERG, född den tredje i tredje nittonhundratrettioett. Faderns yrke: hedersman av okänd härkomst, skurk av första graden. Modern: en dam utan motstycke, mor till geniet …" Perukförsäljaren Berg har begett sig till en rekreationsort vid havet för att mörda sin far. Utan att röja sin identitet hyr han ett rum vägg i vägg där fadern bor tillsammans med sin älskarinna. Men snart blir ingenting som Berg tänkt sig. Istället följer ett intrikat triangeldrama där whiskyn flödar, en skyltdocka bärs runt inlindad i en matta och både katter och undulater får sätta livet till. På en utsökt prosa fylld av absurd humor drivs dramat framåt genom en delirisk inre monolog, minnen ur det förflutna, nuets ansikten och röster samt drömmar om framtiden. Allt filtrerat genom Bergs förvirrade blick och med kuststadens pinande kyla som fond.