Ann Quin: Berg

And Other Stories, 2019, softcover, 160 pages, 12.7 x 19.5 cm

The much-anticipated republication of Ann Quin’s masterpiece of post-war British fiction: caustic, thrilling, unforgettable ‘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, 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.