Small Boat, published in November 2021, is a powerful novel by Vincent Delecroix, translated into English by Helen Stevenson and was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025. It is a fictionalised account of a real tragedy that took place on the 24 November 2021 Channel tragedy, when a dinghy carrying 33 migrants from Northern France to the UK sank. The journey from Plage de la Digue du Braek ended in disaster, with only two survivors, 27 dead bodies recovered, and several still missing. The novel reflects on the confusion between French and British coastguards and the wider human struggle of those forced to flee war and poverty. It opens with unsettling words: “It was your idea, and if you didn’t want to get your feet wet, love, you shouldn’t have embarked. I didn’t push you into the water, I didn’t fetch you from your village or field or ruin of a suburb and put you in your wretched leaky boat, and now the water’s up to your ankles, I get it that you’re frightened, and you want me to save you and you’re impatient”. These sharp lines set the tone for a story that questions responsibility, morality, and human empathy.
In Small Boat, the story is told through the voice of the woman who answered the distress calls that night. Accused of negligence, she refuses to accept full responsibility, raising uncomfortable questions about duty, guilt, and the larger forces like war, poverty, and political indifference that push people into such desperate journeys.
Throughout Small Boat, the narrative keeps circling back to haunting questions: Who really drowned these migrants? Who holds the broom that sweeps them across the seas? Is empathy a human necessity or an “idiotic luxury”? And do words like “I will save you” matter more than actions? These questions are left for the reader to reflect upon, making the novel as much a mirror of our own conscience as it is a story of tragedy.
What makes Small Boat unique is not just the tragic incident at its core, but the way Delecroix uses fiction to shine a light on our collective conscience. The novel confronts readers with unsettling truths about borders, compassion, and the value of human life, leaving us to reflect on how easily society becomes desensitized to suffering.
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Book Availability, Formats, and Pricing
Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix, translated by Helen Stevenson, is published by S&S India on May 7, 2025. The book is in English and has a print length of 103 pages. It is available in Kindle format for ₹247 and in paperback for ₹313. Readers can purchase the book from major retailers such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bookshop, Goodreads. This powerful and thought-provoking novella explores the moral and ethical complexities surrounding a real-life migrant tragedy in the English Channel.
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About the Author of Small Boat
Vincent Delecroix, born in Paris in 1969, is a French philosopher and novelist. He studied at the prestigious École normale supérieure, qualified in philosophy through the agrégation, and now teaches at the École Pratique des Hautes Études. Over his career, he has been widely recognized for his writing, receiving the Prix Valery Larbaud in 2007 for Ce qui est perdu and the Grand Prix de littérature from the Académie française in 2008 for Tombeau d’Achille. His novel Small Boat is the first of his works to be translated into English and was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025.
About the Translator
Helen Stevenson is a British writer and translator who studied Modern Languages at Oxford University. With more than 25 years of experience translating French literature into English, she has worked on books by authors such as Alain Mabanckou and Marie Darrieussecq. Alongside her translation work, she is also the author of novels and a memoir. Stevenson lived for many years in France, in Ceret and Cajarc, before relocating to Somerset, England, where she currently resides.
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Thematic Analysis: Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix
- Migration and Human Survival: At its heart, Small Boat is about human survival against impossible odds. It follows migrants who risk their lives crossing the English Channel, driven by war, poverty, and the desire for dignity. Their journey shows how survival is not just physical but also emotional and spiritual, the will to dream beyond borders. By fictionalising a real tragedy of November 2021, Delecroix reminds us that migration is not an abstract issue but a desperate act of courage, where fragile hope collides with harsh reality on the open sea.
- Moral Responsibility: A central theme in Small Boat is moral responsibility or the refusal to accept it. The narrator, a coastguard officer, denies personal guilt, insisting she merely followed rules. Yet the silence of authorities mirrors her own evasions, raising urgent questions: who is accountable when lives are lost? Is it governments, institutions, or ordinary people who look away? Delecroix forces us to face these uncomfortable truths, showing that ignoring responsibility is itself a moral failure. The novel turns this question back on us, asking what our role is in the suffering of others.
- The Bystander Effect: Small Boat captures the bystander effect with chilling clarity. The tragedy unfolds as migrants call for help, but both French and British coastguards delay action, each assuming the other should respond. The narrator reflects this same passivity, revealing how institutions like individuals deflect duty. Delecroix suggests that looking away, even quietly, can be as harmful as active wrongdoing. By fictionalising the unanswered calls of drowning refugees, the book becomes a stark warning: silence and hesitation in moments of crisis can kill as surely as violence itself.
- Bureaucracy Versus Humanity: The novel sharply critiques how bureaucracy strips away compassion. In Small Boat, the narrator clings to jurisdiction, paperwork, and procedure even as people drown. Delecroix highlights how rigid systems reduce urgent cries for help into technical disputes. Instead of saving lives, rules become excuses for inaction. This conflict between protocol and morality asks whether institutions built for order actually protect cruelty when misused. By showing how migrants were left stranded between French and British authorities, the book reveals the human cost of bureaucracy triumphing over empathy.
- Dehumanisation of Refugees: Dehumanisation is one of the most unsettling themes in Small Boat. Migrants are described as burdens, intruders, or statistics rather than fathers, mothers, and children. The narrator’s cold tone mirrors society’s habit of erasing individuality from refugee stories. Delecroix reveals how language itself becomes a weapon and turning lives into numbers that can be ignored. By stripping away names and faces, governments and citizens alike find it easier to dismiss their suffering. This theme exposes the danger of indifference, showing how cruelty grows when we stop seeing others as human.
- Empathy and Its Absence: The narrator of Small Boat declares empathy a “luxury,” revealing her emotional detachment from the migrants’ pain. This chilling lack of compassion reflects a wider social numbness, where tragedies are consumed as news headlines instead of human loss. Yet Delecroix unsettles readers by drawing us inside the narrator’s voice, forcing us to recognise echoes of our own detachment. The novel raises urgent questions: how much empathy can society sustain in a world full of suffering? And what happens when empathy disappears or do we risk losing our own humanity?
- Power of Language and Storytelling: Language is both weapon and witness in Small Boat. The narrator uses words to justify inaction, twisting language into denial and blame. At the same time, Delecroix uses fiction to restore dignity to the dead, transforming statistics into human stories. This theme highlights how storytelling shapes memory: events can be remembered as numbers in a report or as lives cut short. The novel itself becomes an act of resistance, proving that literature can give voice to the silenced and ensure their suffering is not erased from collective memory.
- The Sea as a Symbol: In Small Boat, the sea becomes a living symbol of both hope and despair. For the migrants, it represents possibility and the chance of a safer life across the Channel. But it also becomes their grave, swallowing their dreams in freezing waters. Delecroix paints the sea as a metaphor for larger forces beyond individual control: politics, poverty, and fate. Its vastness reflects the indifference of the world, while its dangers mirror the risks of migration. The sea is both pathway and barrier, hope and death, echoing humanity’s contradictions.
- Banality of Evil: Drawing from Hannah Arendt’s idea of “the banality of evil,” Small Boat shows how ordinary people contribute to cruelty not through hatred but through indifference. The coastguard narrator is not portrayed as monstrous; she is simply following rules, detached from emotion. Yet her refusal to act is deadly. Delecroix exposes how evil often hides in routine, in quiet excuses, in the shrug of responsibility. The novel forces us to see that systemic cruelty is upheld not just by villains, but by everyday individuals who choose comfort over conscience.
- Family and Personal Conflict: Beyond politics, Small Boat explores personal conflicts within the narrator’s family life. Her cynicism and moral evasions echo in her relationship with her daughter and ex-partner, blurring the line between private choices and public duty. Delecroix shows how the narrator’s worldview hardened by detachment and damages her ability to nurture or connect. This theme suggests that morality is not compartmentalised; how we act at home reflects how we act in the world. The narrator’s fractured family mirrors her fractured sense of responsibility, deepening the novel’s psychological portrait.
- Collective Guilt and Society: Small Boat argues that guilt does not rest on one officer’s shoulders but on society as a whole. The deaths in the Channel resulted from collective failure: divided coastguards, silent governments, and indifferent publics. Delecroix challenges readers to face uncomfortable questions: when refugees drown at borders, do we all share blame? Is silence complicity? The novel refuses to let us place the tragedy neatly on one character. Instead, it insists that humanitarian disasters are products of collective systems and therefore demand collective responsibility.
- Literature as a Call to Action: More than fiction, Small Boat is a moral call to action. By retelling the 2021 Channel tragedy, Delecroix transforms a forgotten headline into an enduring story that demands response. The book shows how literature can do what politics often fails to: awaken empathy, stir debate, and prevent silence. Its Booker Prize recognition confirms its cultural weight. This theme suggests that storytelling is not passive entertainment but an ethical act. Small Boat proves that words, when used with courage, can move societies toward responsibility and change.
Notable Quotes from Small Boat
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“You will not be saved.”
This stark line captures the novel’s haunting atmosphere, echoing the migrants’ despair as well as the narrator’s detached outlook. It reflects the absence of hope in a system where survival depends not on justice but on chance, reminding readers of the brutal reality faced by refugees at sea.
“I’m accused of lacking a soul, but my soul is precisely what I leave in the cloakroom when I get to work, it simply can’t fit into my uniform.”
Here, the narrator reveals how duty demands the suppression of humanity. The image of leaving one’s soul at the door shows how institutions force individuals to abandon empathy, turning people into functionaries rather than human beings.
“Yes, I confirmed, when the sinking started: that’s the real question we need to answer. Because these people were sunk long before they sank.”
This powerful statement suggests the tragedy began long before the dinghy capsized. It highlights how war, poverty, and failed policies doom migrants before their journey even begins, making the sea only the final stage of their suffering.
“Empathy, I said to the police inspector, is an idiotic luxury indulged in by people who do nothing, and who are moved by the spectacle of suffering.”
The narrator’s cynical remark challenges the role of empathy in action. While shocking, it exposes a painful truth: compassion without responsibility risks becoming empty performance. Delecroix invites us to question whether empathy without action is meaningful.
“I kind of lost sight of what a human life is, with these shedloads of migrants getting dumped in the sea every day.”
This confession shows how repetition and exposure to tragedy numb the human conscience. By portraying migrants as “shedloads,” the narrator illustrates how language reduces lives to cargo, reflecting society’s dangerous normalization of loss.
“Even with their eyes shut, people are still watching, and I can’t think of a single one who could say: I wasn’t there.”
This line highlights collective responsibility. Delecroix insists that no one can claim innocence when witnessing human suffering, whether directly or indirectly. It’s a reminder that silence and indifference make us complicit in injustice.
“…how inhumanity develops while no one is looking.”
This quote explains how cruelty grows quietly, unnoticed in daily life. The novel suggests that indifference rather than violence is the true breeding ground of inhumanity, showing how neglect and silence shape humanitarian disasters.
“But it’s enough for one to be lost and there is always one, there has to be one – and it’s as if you had saved no one.”
This heart-breaking reflection shows how the weight of a single life lost can overshadow countless rescues. It captures the emotional burden carried by those who witness tragedies and reminds us that every individual life matters beyond statistics.
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Why You Should Read Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix
Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix is a haunting novel that forces us to confront moral responsibility in the face of human suffering. Inspired by the real-life English Channel tragedy of November 2021, the story follows a French coastguard operator grappling with the consequences of her decisions as migrants plead for rescue. The narrative makes us question the limits of empathy and accountability, reminding us of the narrator’s chilling reflection: “We’re not listening to this just to make you feel bad… Shed some light, I murmured, is exactly what we need to do.” This interplay between light and darkness frames the novel as a piercing allegory of collective indifference.
Delecroix’s language and structure highlight the repetitive, almost bureaucratic tone of tragedy, immersing readers in the rationalizations of an unreliable narrator. His prose is at once philosophical and cutting, filled with moments that resonate beyond the page. At one point, the narrative echoes with a timeless truth: “All of humanity’s problems stem from our inability to stay sitting quietly in the room.” Through such sharp, unsettling lines, Small Boat compels us to reflect on modern complacency and the ways in which silence or inaction can become complicity.
What makes this novel especially powerful is its ability to turn abstract ethics into raw human experience. Delecroix strips away illusions of neutrality, revealing how personal detachment fuels systemic failure. The narrator herself embodies this tension when she admits, “I have no problem listening to the recordings of that night and hearing my own voice, because it’s not the voice of a monster or criminal on the tape – it’s the voice of all of us.” In Small Boat, readers are left with a profound reminder that ignoring tragedy does not absolve us and it implicates us all.
Delecroix’s style is unflinching, philosophical, and sharp, carried by a coastguard officer whose monologue blurs confession and denial. The narration often strips away empathy, mirroring the bureaucracy and indifference of institutions that treat human lives as statistics. At the same time, lyrical rhythms and biting irony give the prose a haunting power, while Helen Stevenson’s translation preserves its stark tone, making the novel both unsettling and unforgettable.
What makes Small Boat essential is its refusal to let us look away. It is not just about a single tragedy but about how cruelty grows quietly while no one is looking. Delecroix forces us to question whether empathy without action matters and whether silence makes us complicit. The weary repetition built into the narrative reflects both the desperation of migrants and society’s fatigue, reminding us that every life matters. The novel stands as a call to action, proving that literature can shed light where institutions fail.
Final Thoughts
Small Boat is a haunting and thought-provoking novel that forces readers to confront the human cost of migration and the moral responsibilities we all share. Through the perspective of a French coastguard officer, Delecroix examines empathy, duty, and the quiet cruelty that can emerge when people look away from suffering. The book’s style is both sharp and reflective, blending philosophical insight with emotional depth, making the tragedy of the migrants’ journey unforgettable. As the narrator chillingly admits, “Why save one, ten, twenty; it’s all the same, since you can’t save them all.” This line captures the stark reality of the novel and leaves readers questioning not only the actions of the characters, but their own role in the world. Small Boat is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the ethical dilemmas and human stories behind modern migration crises.
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