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.

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.

Three opens with the disappearance at sea, possibly suicide, of a young woman, identified only as S. A middle-aged couple, Ruth and Leonard, had been spying on their young lodger in their summer house by the sea, and now begin to pore 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 absorbing portrait of their triangular relationship and the emotional and sexual undercurrents of 1950s British middle-class life.

`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.

"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).

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.