In Small Boat, Vincent Delecroix steers literature into the waters of reckoning. Translated from the French by Helen Stevenson, this quietly harrowing novel, shortlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize, centres on the operator who answered—and failed to act on—the distress calls of a flimsy inflatable boat carrying thirty migrants across the Channel. Twenty-seven of them died that night, on 24 November 2021. Most were Iraqi Kurds.
This is not a retelling of the headlines, not an exposé with names and accusations. Small Boat—originally published in France as Naufrage (Gallimard, 2023)–is something more unsettling: a journey through the disintegration of a human soul. Delecroix’s protagonist, the woman at the end of the line, drifts through the wreckage of her choices. The novel traces her descent from casual cynicism to the first stirring of doubt, then the raw edges of remorse.
The character’s detachment is rendered with devastating restraint. In clipped interior monologues and torqued fragments of remembered speech, the narrative replays the night’s call like a broken tape. The sea, ever-present, rises as both setting and symbol: cold, vast, indifferent. It is into that sea that the narrator’s voice ultimately collapses, as Delecroix weaves a story of grief not only for the lives lost, but for the humanity eroded by repetition, systems, and silence.
This is not aa political novel, though it deals with the consequences of political inaction. It does not point fingers at ministers or institutions. What it does is harder. It asks how an individual lives with having done nothing. It questions how guilt grows—quietly, then violently—within someone who once believed they were only doing their job. It considers what is means to bear witness to a slow death in real time, and to walk away.
Delecroix does not offer redemption, but a mirror—held up not only to a character, but to the readers, the systems they inhabit, and the failures they tolerate.
As the international Booker jury recognised, Small Boat is a novel that resists simplification. It does not speak on behalf of the dead, instead, it asks how the living continue to breathe.
To mark the English publication of Small Boat, Delecroix will be in London:
- Saturday 17 May – 14.00 – 15.30 – Brixton Library
- Sunday 18 May – 19:45 – 21:15 – Southbank Centre, Purcell Room
International Booker Prize Shortlist Readings: Delecroix will join fellow shortlisted authors and their translators for an evening of readings and conversation hosted by Shahidha Bari. - Tuesday 20 May – 19.00 – Tate Modern
International Booker Prize Ceremony: The winner of the 2025 International Booker Prize will be announced at this ceremony.