Small Boat
Vincent Delecroix
Translated by Helen Stevenson and Introduced by Jeremy Harding
Category: Fiction in Translation | Social & Cultural History
ABOUT THE BOOK
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. 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.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Vincent Delecroix (born 1969 in Paris) is a French philosopher and writer. A graduate from the École normale supérieure, and agrégé of philosophy, he teaches at the École Pratique des Hautes Études. Vincent Delecroix received the Prix Valery Larbaud in 2007 for his novel Ce qui est perdu (published in 2006) and the Grand prix de littérature de l\'Académie française after he published Tombeau d\'Achille (in 2008). Small Boat was on the long-list of the 2023 Prix Goncourt. This is the first translation of a novel by Vincent Delecroix in English.
Photo: © Francesca Mantovani
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Helen Stevenson studied Modern Languages at Oxford and has been translating French to English for 25 years, including Black Moses (shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize). She is also the author of Mad Elaine and Love Like Salt: A Memoir. After living in France for many years, she now resides in Somerset, UK
REVIEWS
“A gripping story of an everyday monster that shines its light back on us and on our refusals to face what is happening in our world.”
Gillian Slovo
“The narrator accuses those who judge her of hypocrisy and will only see herself as a cog in the administrative wheel of a France that will not give refuge to the world’s misery. As strong and cruel as the times we live in.”
Paris Match
“As icy as the waters of the Channel on a November night.”
La Voix du Nord
"The metaphor of drowning reminds us of the extreme indifference which allows all of us to keep our head above water whilst others drown. The drowning in question is not that of twenty-seven lives but of humanity itself."
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