Porter Square Books Presents Colum McCann
Run Time: 90 min.
Colum McCann, author of Twist
in conversation with Terry Tempest Williams
Porter Square Books is thrilled to welcome Colum McCann for his latest novel Twist! Author Terry Tempest Williams will join McCann in conversation.
This event will take place on Thursday, March 27 at 6 pm at The Brattle Theatre (40 Brattle St, Cambridge, MA 02138). Doors open at 5:30 pm.
TICKETS 
This event is TICKETED and you can purchase your ticket at the bottom of this page. There are two ticket types.
1) Option 1 includes admission for 1 person to the event, as well as one copy of Twist.
2) Option 2 includes admission only for 1 person.
Copies of McCann’s previous books will also be available for purchase at the event.
ABOUT TWIST
A propulsive 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
“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.
PRAISE FOR TWIST
“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
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
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 non-profit organization Narrative 4, which operates in forty-two countries and uses storytelling to propel community action and change.
Terry Tempest Williams is a writer, teacher and conservationist, noted for her essayistic work on climate, ecology, health, and spirituality. Her recent books include Erosion; The Hour of Land; and When Women Were Birds. In 2024, she collaborated with photographer Fazal Sheikh on Thirst, Great Salt Lake, and artist Mary Frank on Trilogy, comprising three slim volumes, A Burning Testament, What My Body Knows, and We Are Not Alone. Williams’ writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Orion, and The Progressive. She is co-founder of the Constellation Project which seeks to create a community of practice, stressing the importance of imagination, creativity, and spirituality to promote Planetary Health. She divides her time between Cambridge, Massachusetts and Castle Valley, Utah.
