Twist: A Novel

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A propulsive novel of rupture and repair in the digital age, delving into a hidden world deep under the oceanfrom the New York Times bestselling author of Apeirogon and Let the Great World Spin

The spirit of Joseph Conrad hovers over the text, but here the heart of darkness lies at the bottom of the ocean.Salman Rushdie

Everything gets fixed, and we all stay broken.

Anthony Fennell, an Irish journalist and playwright, is assigned to cover the underwater cables that carry the worlds information. The sum of human existencewords, images, transactions, memes, voices, virusestravels through the tiny fiber-optic tubes. But sometimes the tubes break, at an unfathomable depth.

Fennells journey brings him to the west coast of Africa, where he uncovers a story about the raw human labor behind the dazzling veneer of the technological world. He meets a fellow Irishman, John Conway, the chief of mission on a cable repair ship. The mysterious Conway is a skilled engineer and a freediver capable of reaching extraordinary depths. He is also in love with a South African actress, Zanele, who must leave to go on her own literary adventure to London.

When the ship is sent up the coast to repair a series of major underwater breaks, both men learn that the very cables they seek to fix carry the news that may cause their lives to unravel. At sea, they are forced to confront the most elemental questions of life, love, absence, belonging, and the perils of our severed connections. Can we, in our fractured world, reweave ourselves out of the thin, broken threads of our pasts Can the ruptured things awaken us from our despair

Resoundingly simple and turbulent at the same time, Twist is a meditation on the nature of narrative and truth from one of the great storytellers of our times.

Reviews

What a beautiful, sparkling book this is. Another astounding novel from a fiction master.Kirkus Reviews, starred review

An intriguing story of a journalist sent to report on the complex work of repairing the underwater cables that carry the worlds information . . . McCann skillfully ratchets up the uneasiness on board and later adds a provocative twist, taking the novel in an unexpected direction. Readers will be dazzled.Publishers Weekly, starred review

[Colum] McCann (Apeirogon (2021), a writer of ardent empathy and global perception, considers profound aspects of brokenness and repair in a breath-held novel pulsing with echoes of Joseph Conrad freshly illuminating our time of polluted oceans, internet clamor, and perilous polarization. . . . Each line is keenly crafted and every element is momentous in McCanns ravishing deep dive into connectivity and estrangement, power and plunder, protest and sabotage, creativity and madness.Booklist, starred review

Author Bio

Colum McCann is the internationally bestselling author of the novels Apeirogon, TransAtlantic, Let the Great World Spin, Zoli, Dancer, This Side of Brightness, and Songdogs, as well as three critically acclaimed story collections and the nonfiction books Letters to a Young Writer and American Mother. A regular contributor to The New York Times, he lives with his family in New York City. He is the co-founder of the global nonprofit organization Narrative 4, which operates in forty-two countries and uses storytelling to propel community action and change.