Small Boat
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November 2021: an inflatable dinghy carrying migrants from France to the UK capsizes in the Channel, causing the deaths of 27 people on board. How and why did it happen?
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.
Vincent Delecroix
Vincent Delecroix is a French philosopher and writer. A graduate of the École normale supérieure, and agrégé of philosophy, he teaches at the École Pratique des Hautes Études. 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 is the first of his novels to be translated into English.
More by Vincent Delecroix
Helen Stevenson
Helen Stevenson is the author of several novels and memoirs, and translates works from French into English. She lives in Somerset and teachers piano.
More by Helen Stevenson
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