McCann may follow Coppola upriver and Conrad to the heart of darkness but the concerns of his novel are contemporary and urgent and utterly compelling. This is an ambitious novel, note perfect, wild but controlled, with its deft apparatus mapping our most mysterious 21st century malaise – the great loneliness of the connected world

McCann can find beauty, even mystery, on the front lines of danger and conflict – much like Michael Ondaatje, whose prose his own recalls … McCann’s close-focus descriptive prose – taut, compressed, image-rich – flashes like sunken treasure … Few novelists pay such close, visionary, heed to the “true stories of our times”

McCann gives his tale the sense of a held breath … Part thriller, part existential mediation on self, Twist is a strange and satisfying book that reaches for the depths

Simply stunning … Part thriller and part exploration of narrative and truth. (There are deliberate echoes of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness) … The 21st-century human seems a very broken thing in Twist. And McCann’s novel, penned by a brilliant storyteller at the height of his powers, has a disconcerting ability to help you simultaneously find and lose your bearings

Full of wonder at the scale and beauty of the natural world – and full of anger at humanity’s capacity to wreck it … There are passages of extraordinary vividness, evoked with a power that seems to persuade you that you’re either a participant or a witness … Builds to a bravura climactic escapade … I loved the thoughtful, essayistic inquiries into nature and the environment, and the consciousness-raising voyage towards the broken cable … Like Heart of Darkness, Twist lingers after you’ve put it down

An exhilarating adventure reminiscent of Joseph Conrad, with just a hint of Graham Greene

Masterful, a surprising, electric book … A wired up story of what it means to be bend yourself into new shapes, and be broken

Film noir meets The Great Gatsby in McCann’s deep dive of a novel … An immersive read destined to win prizes

Dazzling … a plot that uncoils with page-turning urgency … McCann’s prose has a power and lyrical propulsion that can be quite dazzling … an unexpected denouement that uncoils with page-turning urgency

Not unlike a thriller … There’s still the same relish of language, character and empathy that’s twice seen McCann make the Booker Prize longlist

A Graham Greene-ish thriller … Dark, moving and very entertaining

A thrilling tale of a man all at sea

An expert storyteller … An utterly modern novel

McCann explores the mystery of what it is to be human, and what holds us all together. For this he has picked the ultimate metaphor – the way our connections and the mass of information vital to our lives thrums through glass fibres smaller than a hair deep under the ocean. The cables, both vulnerable and essential, reflect the strength and fragility of our bonds, and of our selves. This is a Gatsby story for the information age. In the end no amount of information, and possibly not love either, can solve the essential mystery of another person

Masterfully woven and delicately layered, and told with such calm wisdom that it will take your breath away. Engrossing, deeply moving and consistently honest, Colum McCann is one of our greatest storytellers

Beautifully written … An immense talent … Possessed of enough heart and empathy to make most writers pale into McCann’s formidable shadow

Electrifying, propulsive … a masterful exploration of the elemental forces at work just below the surface of all our lives

With echoes of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Twist by Colum McCann, his follow-up to the acclaimed Apeirogon, follows two Irishmen off Africa as vital underwater cables are repaired, and sabotaged

Colum McCann gives us a powerfully realist novel of men at sea, literally, emotionally, and metaphorically. It speaks of the brokenness of our time, the successful and unsuccessful attempts at repairs, and the vulnerability of our world. The spirit of Joseph Conrad hovers over the text, but here the heart of darkness lies at the bottom of the ocean

Praise for Colum McCann: McCann writes with an amazing abundance of humanity

McCann is an empathy engine

A giant amongst us – fearless, huge-hearted, a poet with every living breathe

An audacious and wonderfully skilled writer

A great writer prepared to take risks

Colum McCann is a very gifted, charming writer; in full, rhapsodic-onrush mode, he is hard to resist

McCann writes with a ferocious eloquence and a masterly sense of narrative