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.

"Enigmatic and urgent . . . ingenious . . . McCann, author of the National Book Award-winning Let the Great World Spin, clearly knows what he's up to."--The New York Times Book Review

"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."--The Boston Globe

"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."--The Washington Post

"Tantalizing."--The Minnesota Star-Tribune

"An exploration of hidden depths told in shimmering prose."--The Economist

"McCann explores, as ever, 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 fibers smaller than a hair deep under the ocean. . . . This is a Gatsby story for the information age."--Anna Funder

"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."--Salman Rushdie

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

"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 twenty-first-century malaise--the great loneliness of the connected world."--Kevin Barry

"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 world's 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

"Each line is keenly crafted and every element is momentous in McCann's ravishing deep dive into connectivity and estrangement, power and plunder, protest and sabotage, creativity and madness."--Booklist, starred review

Publisher: Random House Trade

Pub date: 2026-03-24

Length: 256 pages