There’s a particular kind of story that’s rarely executed well – one without heroes, without lessons, without even the cold comfort of a villain you can confidently point at and say: there, that’s the evil. Vincent Delecroix’s Small Boat – a slim, bruising novel translated with quiet precision by Helen Stevenson – is that kind of story.
Small Boat, which was shortlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize, centres on a real horror: the drowning of 27 people in the English Channel on November 24 2021. They were crowded into an inflatable dinghy in the dark, reaching out over crackling radio lines, asking – in French, in English, in Kurdish – for help. They didn’t get it.
What is known – not imagined in Delecroix’s pages – is that both French and British coastguards received their calls. And both hesitated, passing responsibility back and forth like a poisoned parcel. People died while operators discussed jurisdiction. The Cranston Inquiry, established to examine the failures of that night, is ongoing, its transcripts and testimonies peeling back the layers of bureaucratic neglect.
