‘Small Boat’ by Vincent Delecroix is based on a real incident that happened 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. The Channel is a major but dangerous route for migrants who attempt to cross it on small boats. Besides drowning, many people are crushed or asphyxiated as it unfortunately happens on small boats that are cramped with people. But the truth remains that migrants still regularly try to cross the channel to make it to the UK from France. Recently on May 3 this year, two women from Sudan lost their lives when the boat carrying them wouldn’t start.

Rescue attempts usually happen from both the French and the British sides. But in November 2021, the French authorities told the migrants they were in British waters and that they had to call them for rescue. By the time help arrived, all but two migrants had died. The narrator of Small Boat is the woman who took the calls. It’s a fictional account of what might have transpired that night and if and why the responder should be held accountable when nations and their policies have repeatedly failed people looking for refuge.

Small Boat is a compelling novel that raises the possibility that all of us, in our own ways, are complicit in the sufferings of migrants. Some parts of the story were drawn from public records but most are the author’s imagination of what might have been on the mind of the coastguard on duty that night. In the opening scene of the novel, she’s being interrogated by a woman who resembles her in her ways. She has her shoulders pulled back and the same coat rack stance as the narrator. Even her hair is up in a tight ponytail in what is a striking resemblance to the narrator. But it becomes evident that the interrogator questions the integrity of the rescue operator and believes she failed to help those in need during distressing times. 

The narrator, however, refuses to take the blame. She was, after all, just doing her job. Her job as a rescue operator demands that she have neither convictions nor conscience. She can’t discriminate and choose who to save. But the world watching or in this case hearing her tell migrants that she didn’t ask them to leave in the first place thinks otherwise and it’s her head on the line. Over the course of the next 100 pages we get to know her better and what drives her to do what she does and make the choices that she makes. Refusing to take more blame than the rest of the world for this disaster, the narrator forces us to confront our biases and indifference.

Small Boat was shortlisted for The International Booker Prize 2025. Despite being just a little over a 100 pages long, I found myself reading it very slowly, deliberating over many ideas presented in the book. It’s definitely not an easy read but it’s compelling and you won’t be able to put it down. 

Fiction

Small Boat

Vincent Delecroix

Translated by Helen Stevenson

Published: 2025

Publisher: Simon & Schuster India

Pages: 122, Paperback