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Twist

The Irish Times top 5 bestseller from the winner of the National Book Award

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Twist

By: Colum McCann
Narrated by: Colum McCann
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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

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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 Action & Adventure Technothrillers Thriller & Suspense Africa
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Critic reviews

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 (KEVIN BARRY)
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
All stars
Most relevant
This is a beautifully lyrical novel that excels in its depiction of fascinating and elusive characters thrown together in the most extraordinary circumstance. The narrator, Anthony Fennell, a hard drinking journalist and playwright joins a ship repairing undersea fibre optic cables off the coast of Africa. 'Everything gets fixed and we all stay broken' seems to cover the major themes, be they people or cables - which seem to me to be a metaphor for the modern world where we have so much information but so little real connection or communication. Fennell becomes as obsessed with the charismatic and enigmatic John Conway, the Chief of Mission as he does with his partner Zanele. And here it is that we find comparisons with 'Heart of Darkness', 'Apocalypse Now' and 'The Great Gatsby'. Like 'Let the Great World Spin' this is an incredibly captivating novel that both entertains the listener and really makes them think. I loved it.




Stunning

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I had no idea where this story was going... Intriguing, beautifully written ,almost like a parable.

The obscurity of the story.

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Colm Mc Cann is a brilliant writer. Anybody who enjoys words will enjoy this. More of a literary novel than a plot-driven one but I was captivated by the story and characters and the world he creates. Would definitely recommend

Great read

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lachrymose reading by the author of an empty story told by an unlikeable writer in which nothing much happens

disappointment

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A book without much of a story or a plot; a thriller that isn't thrilling; the summary on the jacket tells the whole story and the book adds nothing but some padding.

Read the jacket and you've read the book

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