Small Boat

Vincent Delecroix

LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2025

Translated by Helen Stevenson | Introduced by Jeremy Harding

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.

The narrator of Delecroix’s fictional account of the events is the woman who took the calls. Accused of failing in her duty, she refuses to be held more responsible than others for this disaster. Why should she be more responsible than the sea, than the war, than the crises behind these tragedies? A shocking, moral tale of our times, Small Boat reminds us of the power of fiction to illuminate our darkest crimes.

'A gripping story of an everyday monster that shines its light back on us and on our refusals to face what is happening'

Gillian Slovo

The Inheritance

Cauvery Madhavan

It’s 1986 and 29-year-old Marlo O’Sullivan of London-Irish stock has just found out that his sister is his mother. To steady his life, he moves to Glengarriff, to a cottage he has inherited, in the stunning Beara Peninsula.

When a neighbour dies unexpectedly, Marlo takes over his minibus service to Cork. There is nothing regular about the regulars on the bus - especially Sully, a non-verbal 6 year old, who goes nowhere but does the journey back and forth every day, on his own. Marlo is landed with this a strange but compassionate arrangement, fashioned to give the child’s mother respite from his care. Sully’s obsession with an imaginary friend in the ancient oak forests of Glengarriff slowly unveils its terrible secrets – a 400-hundred-year-old tragedy revels itself.

'Brimful of love and forgiveness. I loved seeing West Cork through Cauvery's eyes.'

- Graham Norton

The Wild Ones

Antonio Ramos Revillas (Translated by Claire Storey)

Fifteen-year-old Efraín and his two younger brothers live in a house on the hillside in Monterrey, Northern Mexico. They are left to fend for themselves after their mother is wrongly arrested for theft.  

Má has raised her boys to keep out of trouble with the local gangs and to study for their future, but they are viewed by society as good-for-nothings or criminals simply because of where they live. The only people offering any kind of support are the local gang members – but everything comes with a price tag.



The Darkness of Colours

Martín Blasco (Translated by Claire Storey)

A historical thriller narrated from two perspectives, in two eras. April 1885, and five babies – all from immigrant families – go missing, snatched from their homes at night. And a doctor begins a sinister experiment, giving each child not a name but a colour: Blue, White, Green, Black and Brown…Twenty-five years after the kidnapping, the children now grown up, suddenly reappear on the doorsteps of their biological parents. Confused by his daughter’s memory loss, one parent hires a journalist to investigate. Will he discover what has happened to his daughter and the other children? And why have they suddenly reappeared after all this time? 

A gripping page-turner first published in Argentina.

Out now!

Never Tell Anyone Your Name

Federico Ivanier (Translated by Claire Storey)

Travelling between France and Spain, a 16-year-old boy is marooned in the Spanish border town of Irun. Snow is falling, darkness is creeping in, and the next train to Madrid is not due until midnight.

The boy is hungry. And he has eight hours to kill.

‘Hauntingly mysterious… right to the end’

Johanna Calmont, World Kit Lit