Small Boat is such a thought-provoking book. Delecroix does a great job of exploring blame, passivity, and the desensitisation that comes with repeated crises. It really makes you reflect on how easily responsibility can be passed off onto scapegoats to distract from deeper, systemic issues. It also speaks to the danger of neutrality and the ease of saying “it’s not my problem” - but does that really absolve us of accountability, or just make us more complicit? An honest, necessary, and uncomfortably relevant read that stays with you long after you’ve finished.

Book 12/13 of the longlist

Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025 -Book 6/6

Translated from French in English by Helen Stevenson and Jeremy Harding

I am posting my review just in time before the winner is announced Tomorrow. I had to read 5 other shortlistees to finally find my winner in this short novel.

The novel is based on a true event from November 2021, when a refugee dinghy capsized and caused the death of 27 people on board. Only 2 survived. There were errors made from the French side who considered the boat to be into British waters and decided to let them deal with the problem.

The story is told from the POV of the person who took the distress calls of the refugees from the French side. She is accused to failing her duty by negligence or maybe even intent. The author uses stream of consciousness to tell the tale and most of the novel takes place during an interview between this woman and a female police officer. We get to spend some time inside her head and it is not a pleasant place to be. She refuses to consider herself in any way responsible by what happened.
The novel starts like this: “I didn’t ask you to leave, I said. It was your idea, and if you didn’t want to get your feet wet, love, you shouldn’t have embarked. I didn’t push you into the water, I didn’t fetch you from your village or field or ruin of a suburb and put you in your wretched leaky boat, and now the water’s up to your ankles, I get it that you’re frightened, and you want me to save you and you’re impatient. You’re counting on me. But I didn’t ask you for any of that. So you’ll just have to grin and bear it and let me get on with my job. And apparently these thoughts were so strong that I actually spoke them out loud, the first bit, at least, certainly if the recordings are to be believed and there’s no reason not to believe them. I accept that.” The whirlwind of thoughts continue in the same style. Here is some more “I understood perfectly, your feet are in the water but it’s English water, not French, and yes I know they’re both equally cold, so set your sights in that direction if you still know your north from your south.”

It becomes quite easy to consider this person a monster, but the novel makes you wonder about you own morality and what would you do in the same position. “Empathy, I said to the police inspector, is an idiotic luxury indulged in by people who do nothing, and who are moved by the spectacle of suffering. Good for them. But the truth is you can’t do both at once.” When the interviewer tries to accuse her of lack of empathy, she argues that feelings are not wanted in her job and she had to remain calm and impassive in order to be effective. She repeats that statement over and over again. She also argues that the inquiries are trying to make other people feel good about themselves, not to actually check the facts. “I know people would have liked me to say: You’re not going to die, I’ll save you. And not because I would have actually saved them, done my job, done the necessary, sent rescue. Not because I’d done what you’re meant to do. They wanted me to have said it, at least to have said it, just to have said the words.”

This was excellent, intense, horrid in its themes and succeeds to make the reader extremely uncomfortable. This is what good literature should do, make us question ourselves and our thoughts on life.

2.5 stars
I do not like novels based on true events--especially those events that are recent or even based in living memory. How can it feel for someone who is fictionalized against their will, or whose close relatives are (and even more so when those relatives are no longer alive)? People believe (whether through naivete or later memory of "I know I read somewhere that..." things in these novels and how can it affect people in these novels, their descendants, and in this case...could it affect ongoing charges? I would much rather read a rigorously researched history, biography, or long-form journalism piece. Or, I would rather read a novel that is fully from the author's imagination.

Don't judge a book by it's cover... well I was drawn to this immediately by the cover when I saw it on @Netgalley and then after reading the premis I knew I had to request it. Later I saw it was longlisted and then shortlisted for the International Booker Prize so I knew I'd not been led astray.

What a powerful, soul searching, confronting book, or as the description says - "A shocking, moral tale of our times, Small Boat reminds us of the power of fiction to illuminate our darkest crimes."

In November 2021, an inflatable dinghy carrying migrants from France to the United Kingdom capsized in the Channel causing the death of 27 people on board. Despite receiving numerous calls for help, the French authorities wrongly told the migrants they were in British waters and had to call the British authorities for help. By the time rescue vessels arrived on the scene, all but two of the migrants had died.

Small Boat is the fictional account of this event, and it is told mostly through the eyes of the French dispatch worker who took the 14 distress calls and did not send help. She is instantly dislikeable, for obvious reasons, but also the writer makes you reflect back on society's attitudes to refugees, their treatment, your own inaction... there's one paragraph I read at least 5 times and then had to sit at length with my discomfort.

There is also one section told through the eyes of the refugees as they left the shore and as the boat sinks into the icy sea. This section had me weeping and I had the feeling I could sit and weep for days. It is completely devastating.

A brilliant book. So well done. A scathing look at today's society and our ability to look away, turn off our phones, and ignore the suffering of fellow humans... I challenge everyone to read it.

Thank you @netgalley for my gifted ebook. I'm going to need the physical copy for my shelves.

Really enjoyed this, I liked the narrative style especially, and the little tidbit of information we were given at the start. The mood is very somber which I liked, and I liked how we were all complicit in the crime, not just the protagonist

This short but powerful novel was kindly sent to me for review by Hope Road Publishing, and it’s a stark, poignant reflection on a real-life tragedy. Based on the 2021 drowning of 29 migrants in the English Channel, it tackles the grim realities of migration and the desperate journeys taken in small boats like the one on the cover. It's a timely and urgent book, not just for France and the UK, but for any place grappling with displacement and migration crises.

The novel is split into three parts, and in the first, we meet a coastguard worker being interviewed by police about a disaster that unfolded on her watch. She hesitated to act when called by a sinking migrant boat, waiting for it to drift into UK waters. What follows is a fascinating philosophical exploration of morality and human nature. The coastguard justifies her cold, detached actions, arguing that emotion doesn’t change the outcome. It’s unsettling and deeply thought-provoking. You can sense Delacroix’s background as a philosophy professor on the page, and there’s a discomfort in seeing where hypothetical thought experiments meet upsetting realities.

Part 2 shifts to the harrowing perspective of the migrants themselves, making the tragedy hit hard. It’s devastating, especially after the abstract first part. The ending, like the whole book, throws everything into question. What makes us complicit in such tragedies? What of this was real, and what was an inner struggle with grief and guilt and pain? It’s uncomfortable but essential reading.

Also, the cover design is stunning, designed with a cutout of a person in the shape of a body, turning the sea into a visual of lost lives. Highly recommended: it’s haunting, challenging, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it win the International Booker.

The International Booker longlist this year has a number of short novels exploring big themes.

'Small boat' looks at the migration crisis from the perspective of an operator of the French marine emergency rescue service. It is based on a real disaster in which 27 people drowned in the Channel. What made the disaster even more shocking were the audio tapes of the rescue operator, who not only screws up, but is also talking to herself, saying these people won't be saved and that it's not her fault if they decide to undertake the dangerous crossing in a flimsy dinghy.

Delecroix takes the perspective of the operator and as such holds up a mirror to us readers. You constantly wonder whether the shameful excuses the operator uses, actually apply at a larger scale to all of Western Europe.

Really well done (but there are two books on the shortlist that I would rate higher).

A short emotional novel based on true events. I grieve each time I hear of a boat capsizing for the lives lost and this was a difficult read. The writing style though eloquent was hard to follow.

This is a difficult book to read, but thankfully it's just long enough to become unbearable before it's over. I don't mean that in a critical way- rather, Delecroix is so effective at inhabiting the inner voice of the horrible narrator that your skin crawls. It's done very well, with a creeping sense of unease that morphs into an indictment of society for enabling and, by default, becoming complicit in the global refugee crisis.

I appreciated what Delacroix was able to do in this slim book, but it didn't hit me as hard as I was hoping. The emotional impact of the above twist wasn't what I was hoping for. Because of that, I'm only giving it 4 stars, but it's a quick enough read that it's worth picking up anyway.

SMALL BOAT by Vincent Delacroix and translated by Helen Stevenson brought up so many questions for me! This book is about a subject near to my heart—the challenges faced by refugees—but it’s also a fictionalized account of a true story, in which twenty-nine migrants crossing the Channel from France to the UK slowly drown in their unseaworthy dinghy. They call the French rescue station many times over several hours, and the call operator keeps telling them that help is on the way, but she never dispatches a rescue boat.

The majority of the book is told from the perspective of said call operator after the incident as she defends her actions (or non-action) to an accusatory police investigator (or is it her own conscience?). She argues that the death of twenty-seven people that night, which the general public considers to be a direct result of her morally repugnant choices, actually had many antecedent causes—causes which implicate all of us in the West.

This was strikingly done. The psychological and ethical wrangling, the bipartite structure of her musings, and the belligerent tone of the character all worked so well. And yet it left me somewhat cold. I’ve been trying to understand why.

First, I think it’s because the book’s main point—that we’re all complicit in killing refugees—doesn’t go far enough. I worry that people will read this book, nod in agreement, and think, okay, yep, we’re all complicit, that sucks, and go back to their normal lives. Obviously, most books we read don’t result in action or life change. But since this book has such a clear 𝘱𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘵 to it, I feel like it needs something more. It feels like Delacroix engineers a “let him who is without sin be the first to cast a stone” situation and that just feels insufficient for what’s happening and what’s been happening for years.

Second, Delacroix decides to give the migrants’ perspective just a short section. I see how it serves the book structurally, giving us a break in the claustrophobic justifications spun by the call operator, but I kind of hate it when books give rich interiority to the Western character and zero interiority to migrants. So even as we are with them in the sinking boat and feeling their terror, we don’t really know them as individuals. Delacroix gives us the call operator’s backstory—single mom whose ex-husband hates refugees and whose parents help with her daughter—not to mention the lengthy exploration of her psyche—but we get none of that from the refugees. I’m sure Delacroix chose this for artistic reasons, but it perpetuates the othering of migrants. In this narrative, they are bodies to be rescued, or not rescued; they are lives to be debated over, rather than fully realized people.

Which brings me to my third question. Mohamed Mbougar Sarr’s THE SILENCE OF THE CHOIR was in the running for the International Booker Prize this year, too, and it does what SMALL BOAT does and more. It gives texture to the anger and frustration of the refugees who land in a small Sicilian town; it illuminates the helplessness of the townspeople who are trying to assist the refugees; it shows the bitter vitriol of the other townspeople who want the refugees out. More than any other book I’ve read, it shows the complex interplay of, to borrow Dina Nayeri’s phrase, the “ungrateful refugee,” the do-gooders, and the xenophobes. As I consider why SMALL BOAT was chosen for the IB longlist over THE SILENCE OF THE CHOIR, I think it was likely viewed as a pithier work of literature, but also, I think its moral clarity makes it more digestible. THE SILENCE OF THE CHOIR gets into “what comes next” territory, and that is complicated and drawn-out and unsolvable: but it’s also very, very real.

So all that to say, yes, SMALL BOAT accomplishes its aim. It gets its one point across, and it does it in a compelling way. And yes, you should read it. But I think we should also talk about it more, and talk about how we’re actually going to help refugees. P.S. I recommend all the books in the stack!

Based upon a true life event, Small Boat, tells the story of an inflatible boat carrying migrants in the English Channel, somewhere between England and France, which takes on water and sinks killing 27 souls. We read about the many calls asking for help that were received and ignored by a French call center employee and her total abdication of any moral responsibility for the lack of action resulting in the deaths. Why is the sea not to blame? Why are the migrants not to blame for embarking upon this journey ?

It was no surprise to me that the author is a noteworthy French philosopher, as he delves into the self justification of inhumane thoughts and actions. When the employee is called to explain her behavior, she accepts no responsibility. Are there no consequences for one who has no moral compass? Delecroix has done of masterful job of describing a scenario that has implications in today’s world and for much of human history. Five stars for a short book with an important message. It is being published today. I highly recommend it readers who enjoy thinking while reading. My thanks to NetGalley and Hope Road Publishing for an ARC in exchange for my review.

I couldn’t get into this. Preachy, miserable tone. I think maybe just the wrong book wrong person wrong time situation, but there’s something about a book like this I am so tired of reading.

Small Boat is the most powerful book I’ve read this year. If you haven’t picked it up yet, I highly recommend you do so! I would be thrilled to see Small Boat win this year’s International Booker Prize.

This novel is based on true events. In November 2021, more migrants attempted to cross the Channel from France to the UK than in any other month. While many were rescued, unfortunately, not all of them survived.

When boats begin to sink, people on board call the operators at CROSS in Cap Gris-Nez, France, for help. This fictionalized story revolves around one such boat in November 2021, which urgently called for assistance. A desperate migrant who was already in the water made a call and was informed, “Yes, but you’re in English waters.”

This tragedy resulted in the deaths of 27 migrants and raised serious questions about accountability. Following the incident, a French investigation scrutinized the operators for their suspected “failure to assist persons in danger.”

Vincent Delecroix skillfully combines details from public records with his creativity. Our narrator is the radio operator who failed to save the boat full of people.

This small yet profound book is divided into three parts. The first part features our narrator being questioned by a policewoman, revealing her lack of empathy. The second part recounts the tragic events from the migrants’ perspective as their boat sinks, and they wait, hoping for help to arrive. The third part focuses on the narrator reflecting on her life and situation after the interview concludes.

The book raises important questions about the migrant crisis, morality, humanity, conscience, guilt, and blame.

I absolutely loved this book! It is an important and impactful novel that will linger in readers’ minds long after they finish it. Delecroix highlights crucial questions about how many of us are complicit in the suffering of migrants. Where do guilt and blame truly lie?

Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix is a poignant and thought-provoking novel that delves into the moral complexities surrounding a real-life tragedy. In November 2021, an inflatable dinghy carrying migrants from France to the UK capsized in the English Channel, resulting in the deaths of 27 individuals. Despite receiving numerous distress calls, French authorities failed to provide timely assistance, leading to widespread outrage.

Delecroix's fictionalized account centers on the French coastguard radio operator who received these calls but did not act to prevent the disaster. The narrative is structured in three parts: the operator's interrogation by police, a harrowing depiction of the sinking from the migrants' perspective, and a return to the operator's life post-tragedy. This structure effectively explores themes of guilt, responsibility, and the human tendency to compartmentalize moral failings.​

This is a novel with philosophical depth and emotional resonance. How far back does complicity go? The book holds a mirror up to ourselves, it’s a reflection on the bystander effect and the moral disengagement that often accompanies systemic failures.​

Small Boats falls into the “slim but mighty” category. It’s a powerful and timely work that challenges readers to confront uncomfortable truths about complicity and the human cost of indifference.

I really wanted to read this book but when I my request was accepted it had no archive date. It was only when I went looking for it today to download that I realised it had been suddenly archived. It would be useful if we could be notified when an archive date has been changed. Thank you

Morally illuminating and a book for the times. This title was heartbreaking as it detailed the sinking of the vessel, in full. Painful, brilliantly written.

Wow, this book! ❤️‍🔥 Slim in size but certainly not in scope, the narrative steadily unspools itself into something vast and infinite, encompassing the nature of our big little lives and the existential truths of our humanity. I found it necessary to slow down, absorbing all it had to say, then immediately wanting to start over at the beginning once I’d reached the end. It sunk itself into me, and I’m still thinking about it all these days later, a mark of a good book imo!

Vincent Delecroix’s Small Boats was first published in French as Naufrage in 2023, and impeccably translated into English by Helen Stevenson. As outlined in the introduction by Jeremy Harding, it is based on true events that took place on the night of November 23/24 in 2021, a boatload of refugees sinking to their deaths attempting to cross the waters from France to the UK, key officers from the French regional monitoring and rescue centre (aka CROSS) later interviewed to ascertain what might have led to the tragedy, records of their actions, what was said and unsaid in that time available for public consumption.
With plenty of handwringing across both sides of the channel, this tragedy becomes a site of spectacle, judgment and condemnations aplenty, a collective hunt for absolution all the more agonizing in the face of its apparent lack. After all:
▫️”There is no shipwreck without spectators”

It’s an incredibly powerful book that examines language, complicity, justice and morality, empathy and evil. Like crossing a hurricane, the narrative is told in three parts. First, the tense aftermath of tragedy when a CROSS officer is interrogated by someone bearing an uncanny resemblance to herself, all the more shocking for its dispassionate coolness. Next, the relative calm that accompanies the recounting of said tragedy, tension defused somewhat in knowing what has taken place yet unnerving still to witness, the eye of the storm. At last, the ferocity amps up, the weight of reckoning urgently colliding with a sense of cosmic inevitability, one that we are all caught up in, the threat of humanity devouring itself whole.

Plumbing the depths of our psyches and the philosophies we live by, the novel’s stylistic choices provide both a window and a mirror into human nature. The choice of narrator, storyline, and shifts in writing style all serve a purpose to illustrate not just the bureaucratic banality of evil, characterised by a lack of imagination and self-reflection, but how scapegoating a singular individual distracts from true reckoning with the systemic nature of evil, as well as our own complicity and responsibilities towards one another. Such a trial is reduced to a symbolic act, designed to promote (subjective) moral narratives and avoids true accountability.

I especially appreciated its examination of language and narrative, how they shape and reflect our interior lives, identities, and moralities. How they inform how we see ourselves and each other. It calls into question our relative agency, what we owe one another, who has the right to tell a story, who is ‘humanised’, and, ultimately, how we are all more than just stories. Adrift in the sea of life, we cling to words like a life raft, a means of connection, protest, and severance, but metaphors ring hollow and words cease to have meaning in the face of indescribable truths: that They drown so We can breathe, that we breathe because they have drowned.

Can’t recommend this enough! Encompassing the earthly and existential, it’s at once a compelling tale and furious indictment, expressing profound shame and sorrow, love and compassion for humanity in a deeply unjust world. It demonstrates the banality of both evil and empathy, compelling us to go beyond ourselves and really look at the systems we are unthinkingly caught up in. As reflected in its poetics, words alone do not absolve us. Literature alone isn’t revolutionary. Wringing our hands in outrage as readers and spectators of suffering still translates to inaction.
No one survives alone. It is what we do when the book is closed, how we choose to act in service of one another in the knowledge of all we have witnessed that might bring about true catharsis, perhaps even justice. We are neither gods nor monsters, but humans altogether capable of creating the change we wish to see in the world, so that all of us may breathe.

Thank you so much @hoperoadpublishing for my copy of this book, loved every page!

Wow what a book! This book is based on the true events of 27 migrants crossing the Channel from France to UK who tragically died in 2021 over the course of 3 hours because of inactions/miscommunications on both sides.

What I loved most about this book is its moral clarity told through the stream of consciousness style of a woman (the French coast guard who took the distress calls from the sinking migrants but didn’t do much to help them) being investigated for negligence.

The author does a phenomenal job in holding up a mirror showing that while the readers might be disgusted by the woman’s ideas and actions, what we are ultimately disgusted with is our own inactions. But through this “unlikable” narrator (the book is so much deeper than using this term, but for the sake of easier communication, please bear with me), I was reminded of humanity’s moral apathy and perhaps most importantly, my own moral apathy disguised as moral superiority. It gave me so much to think about and made me utterly depressed by the disconnection between our collective complicity in all the deaths and destructions around the world.

SMALL BOAT is not an easy read. The stream of consciousness writing style coupled with circular philosophical arguments will demand your attention. And most of all, it asks the question: do you actually want to save the migrants (or anyone)? Or do you just want to feel good about yourself?

Review: Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix – A Haunting Portrait of Bureaucratic Indifference

Longlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize, Small Boat is Vincent Delecroix’s first novel to appear in English, deftly translated by Helen Stevenson. Originally published in French as Naufrage, the novella offers a piercing philosophical inquiry into one of the most harrowing migration tragedies in recent memory: the 2021 sinking of a migrant boat in the English Channel.

Told through the voice of an unnamed French coastguard officer, the novel charts a series of distress calls made by a dinghy carrying twenty-nine migrants, fourteen in total, which go unheeded. The protagonist—detached, cynical, and almost wilfully indifferent—serves not just as a character but as a conduit for wider critique: of institutional failure, jurisdictional ambiguity, and the emotional austerity required to navigate state bureaucracy. Her voice is unnerving in its dispassion: “I had no more opinion on the migrants than I did on migration policy… I was not required to have an opinion.”

Delecroix, himself a philosopher, skilfully probes the moral cost of such detachment, exposing the quiet complicity that allows injustice to flourish. The novel’s closing section, narrated by a survivor, shifts the emotional register—personalising the scale of loss and underscoring the human cost of systemic inertia.

A taut, lyrical meditation on empathy, responsibility, and the politics of indifference, Small Boat is as much a philosophical provocation as it is a literary achievement. It demands that we ask not just what happened, but why—and at what cost. Essential reading.

“but I did ask what would have happened if I had assessed the situation correctly. Dead just the same, by the time the rescuers got there, as happened half the time. Unless it was dead perhaps, in which case between dead perhaps and dead for sure there was an irreducible gap that from now on would always stand between me and innocence.“⁣
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From: 𝘚𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘉𝘰𝘢𝘵 by Vincent Delecroix, tr by Helen Stevenson and Jeremy Harding⁣
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International @thebookerprizes longlist #5⁣
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Thank you @peepaltreepress for the gifted copy!⁣
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Oof. This was devastating. A skilled portrayal of western negligence and careless disregard of the refugee crisis. Unfortunately, you could swap out refugee crisis for too many other glaring world issues and it will still be true, but the fact that it was used here with one specific, very real incident, made it all the more powerful to me. ⁣
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Yes, going in, I felt a certain level of unease about the fact that a white man was writing about this horrible tragedy from the perspective of the white radio operator that willfully did not send a rescue ship to a dinghy with 29 migrants in the middle of the Channel, even though their dire situation was painfully obvious from their phone calls, and this led to the death of 27 of them. I was afraid it would be another story not giving voice to the victims. ⁣
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In the end though, it seemed a deliberate choice to write it like this to emphasize society’s role in these tragedies and I must admit that it was that uncomfortable feeling of being inside the head of that radio operator making her sickening arguments, alongside the actual human calamity, that hammered its message down and it even started to feel more appropriate coming from this white author than when he would have written from the victims’ point of view. ⁣

I read that the author is a philosopher and that does make sense: here he explores collective guilt versus individual blame. Although sometimes the radio operator’s reasoning felt a little too “sophisticated” or philosophical - for lack of a better word - for this specific character, it was all helping to make the point. In the end I think the detachment of the victims’ inner lives is a portrayal of how the radio operator got to her reasoning. The dehumanization and generalizations of the lives of refugees by the media and politicians on a daily basis, is part of what makes it so easy for so many people to just look away.⁣
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All in all, I thought this was a very thought-provoking read and it is one that I keep wanting to talk about with people. I think this is an important read and I am very happy it gets more widely read due to it being longlisted.⁣
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