Small Boat: A Novel

Synopsis

Shortlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize, Small Boat is a powerful novel inspired by the true story of the 2021 English Channel disaster, in which 27 migrants lost their lives after repeated calls for help went unanswered.

Told through the voice of the French navy officer who received those calls, Vincent Delecroix's novel examines the ways people justify impossible decisions and the systems that allow responsibility to be endlessly deferred. As the officer defends her actions, the novel becomes a profound meditation on conscience, accountability, and the moral consequences of looking away.

Spare, unsettling, and deeply thought-provoking, Small Boat asks one of the defining questions of our time: where does responsibility begin, and who bears it?

About the Author

Vincent Delecroix is a French philosopher and award-winning novelist whose work explores ethics, history, and the complexities of human behaviour. Small Boat, translated by Helen Stevenson, was shortlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize and is his first novel to appear in English.

Publisher
Mariner Books

Publication Date
April 21, 2026

Format
Hardcover

Pages
128

Subjects
Literary Fiction · Translated Fiction · French Literature · Political Fiction

ISBN
9780063491694