Twist
- Author Colum McCann
- Narrator Colum McCann
- Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
- Publish Date 6 March 2025
- Run Time 8 hours and 4 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Modern and contemporary fiction, Narrative theme: journeys and voyages.
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What to expect
Bloomsbury presents Twist, written and read by Colum McCann
A darkly epic novel about connection, disconnection and destruction – from the New York Times-bestselling, National Book Award-winning, Booker Prize-longlisted author of Let the Great World Spin
**Named a 2025 book to look out for by the Observer, Financial Times, Irish Times and New European**
‘Urgent and utterly compelling’ KEVIN BARRY
‘One of our greatest storytellers’ ELIF SHAFAK
‘A powerfully realist novel of men at sea … It speaks of the brokenness of our time, the successful and unsuccessful attempts at repairs, and the vulnerability of our world’ SALMAN RUSHDIE
____________________________________________________
Anthony Fennell, a journalist, is in pursuit of a story buried at the bottom of the sea: the network of tiny fibre-optic tubes that carry the world’s information across the ocean floor - and what happens when they break.
So he has travelled to Cape Town to board the George Lecointe, a cable repair vessel captained by Chief of Mission John Conway. Conway is a talented engineer and fearless freediver - and Fennell is quickly captivated by this mysterious, unnerving man and his beautiful partner, Zanele.
As the boat embarks along the west coast of Africa, Fennell learns the rhythms of life at sea, and finds his place among the band of drifters who make up the crew. But as the mission falters, tensions simmer - and Conway is thrown into crisis. A terrible, violent tragedy is unfolding in the life he has left behind on land; and, trapped out at sea, it seems as if the vast expanse of the ocean is closing in.
Then Conway disappears; and Fennell must set out to find him.
As taut and propulsive as a thriller, and a timeless exploration of narrative and truth, Twist is the work of a master storyteller at the height of his powers.
'Electrifying, propulsive ... A masterful exploration of the elemental forces at work just below the surface of all our lives' COLIN WALSH, author of Kala
A darkly epic novel about connection, disconnection and destruction – from the New York Times-bestselling, National Book Award-winning, Booker Prize-longlisted author of Let the Great World Spin
**Named a 2025 book to look out for by the Observer, Financial Times, Irish Times and New European**
‘Urgent and utterly compelling’ KEVIN BARRY
‘One of our greatest storytellers’ ELIF SHAFAK
‘A powerfully realist novel of men at sea … It speaks of the brokenness of our time, the successful and unsuccessful attempts at repairs, and the vulnerability of our world’ SALMAN RUSHDIE
____________________________________________________
Anthony Fennell, a journalist, is in pursuit of a story buried at the bottom of the sea: the network of tiny fibre-optic tubes that carry the world’s information across the ocean floor - and what happens when they break.
So he has travelled to Cape Town to board the George Lecointe, a cable repair vessel captained by Chief of Mission John Conway. Conway is a talented engineer and fearless freediver - and Fennell is quickly captivated by this mysterious, unnerving man and his beautiful partner, Zanele.
As the boat embarks along the west coast of Africa, Fennell learns the rhythms of life at sea, and finds his place among the band of drifters who make up the crew. But as the mission falters, tensions simmer - and Conway is thrown into crisis. A terrible, violent tragedy is unfolding in the life he has left behind on land; and, trapped out at sea, it seems as if the vast expanse of the ocean is closing in.
Then Conway disappears; and Fennell must set out to find him.
As taut and propulsive as a thriller, and a timeless exploration of narrative and truth, Twist is the work of a master storyteller at the height of his powers.
'Electrifying, propulsive ... A masterful exploration of the elemental forces at work just below the surface of all our lives' COLIN WALSH, author of Kala
Critics Review
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
Transforming real-world observation into powerful storytelling is McCann’s superpower
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
Genuinely haunting and sometimes thrilling ... There are also plenty of genuinely gorgeous passages about the way people are translated into dots of light in our information-based economy. As usual, McCann is sensitive to the fluid nature of oppression across history and countries
Told with McCann’s incomparable prose, Twist opens a window into an obscure way people on earth are connected, told by a man who is himself fairly broken ... Gorgeously written and sad and inspiring
Film noir meets The Great Gatsby in McCann's deep dive of a novel ... An immersive read destined to win prizes
Every sentence feels placed with confidence - and through various authorial wiles he has produced a work at once enigmatic and urgent
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
An exploration of hidden depths told in shimmering prose
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
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