INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • An “urgent [and] ingenious” ( The New York Times Book Review ) novel
of rupture and repair in the digital age delving into a hidden world deep under the ocean—from
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 A PUBLISHERS WEEKLY KIRKUS REVIEWS AND BOOKPAGE BEST BOOK OF THE
YEAR “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 world’s information.
The sum of human existence—words images transactions memes voices viruses—travels through
the tiny fiber-optic tubes. But sometimes the tubes break at an unfathomable depth. Fennell’s
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.
