Twist

At the heart of Colum McCann’s Twist lie the fiber-optic underwater cables, or submarine cables, that Anthony must write about. These cables connect the world in the unlikely place of oceans’ depths: “There are currently around 600 in-service and planned submarine cable systems, stretching nearly 1.4 million kilometers across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and other strategic passages” (“Submarine cables: The invisible backbone of the digital revolution.” Hanwha Group, 13 Sep. 2024). These cables are expansive and facilitate the transfer of information and global communication. Started as a means for transatlantic communication using Morse code, the cables have evolved with technology: “Modern submarine cables use fiber-optic technology. Lasers on one end fire at extremely rapid rates down thin glass fibers to receptors at the other end of the cable. These glass fibers are wrapped in layers of plastic (and sometimes steel wire) for protection” (“Submarine Cable 101.” Telegeography). This imagery, of tiny wires that transmit information at seemingly impossible speeds, is one that McCann employs frequently in the novel. The protagonist, Anthony, often wonders in amazement at how the cables function and speculates on what is going through them.

The premise of the novel is that a cable breaks off the coast of Africa, creating a major internet and communications disconnection. Anthony, hired to write about the cables and the company that controls them, finds himself following Conway, the chief of mission of the Georges Lecointe, out to repair the cable. Though Twist is a fictional, and dramatic, depiction of what occurs when a cable breaks, the occurrence is actually not that rare: “Submarine cables break all the time. On average, two to four break somewhere in the world every week. […] Most [breaks] come from fishing equipment, normal anchoring activity, and natural disasters like undersea earthquakes” (Burdette, Lane. “What To Know About Submarine Cable Breaks.” Telegeography, 21 Nov. 2024). In Twist, the main cable breaks because of an underwater avalanche caused by flooding in Africa. Another cable breaks, however, because of a fishing vessel, capturing both the everyday and severe causes of the breaks. Though these breaks do happen frequently, they do not often cause major outages, as the organizations that control the cables are able to redirect information through other cables, demonstrating how global connection depends on a largely invisible web of cables.