How does the internet get from A to B? You might assume that data travels via satellite, but the reality is quite different. Along the ocean floor, hundreds of thousands of miles of fibre-optic cable transport the world’s information as pulses of light. Cables are faster, cheaper and more efficient than wireless alternatives, but they are also more vulnerable. Locating the source of a tear can take months. To mend 21st-century infrastructure, repair crews have to use 19th-century methods: they go out to sea and look. 

Twist, Colum McCann’s eighth novel, follows Anthony Fennell, a struggling Irish novelist. Minor success has given way to ‘clean, plain silence’; to pay the bills Anthony is writing journalism. His latest assignment, to report on the repair of undersea cables off the west coast of Africa, provides him with an excuse to leave the house, ‘a decent word count’ and ‘a generous budget’. A boat, the Georges Lecointe, will be waiting for him in Cape Town. Its chief of mission is a young man named John Conway. 

Conway bears a striking resemblance to Charles Marlow, the reluctant colonialist in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Both are young, unlikely captains of boats bankrolled by Belgian companies in Africa. Both, too, seem to possess an almost religious mystique. ‘Troubled and angelic’ is Anthony’s impression of Conway on meeting