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.

"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.

Ann Quin (b. 1936) was a British writer from Brighton. She was prominent amongst a group of British experimental writers of the 1960s, which included B.S. Johnson. Prior to her death in 1973, she published four novels: Berg (1964), Three (1966), Passages (1969), and Tripticks (1972). A collection of short stories and fragments, The Unmapped Country (edited by Jennifer Hodgson) was published by And Other Stories in 2018.

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.

Ann Quin (1936-1973) was a working-class writer from Brighton, England. She was at the forefront of British experimentalism in the 1960s along with BS Johnson and Alan Burns. Prior to her death in 1973, she published four novels: Berg(1964), Three (1966), Passages (1969) and Tripticks (1972). A collection of short stories and fragments, The Unmapped Country (edited by Jennifer Hodgson), was published by And Other Stories in 2018. Quin's novel Berg was republished by And Other Stories in 2019, followed by Three in 2020.

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.'

Ann Quin (1936-1973) was a working-class writer from Brighton, England. She was at the forefront of British experimentalism in the 1960s along with BS Johnson and Alan Burns. Prior to her death in 1973, she published four novels: Berg(1964), Three (1966), Passages (1969) and Tripticks (1972). A collection of short stories and fragments, The Unmapped Country (edited by Jennifer Hodgson), was published by And Other Stories to great acclaim in 2018. Quin's novel Berg was republished by And Other Stories in 2019, followed by Three in 2020.