Small Boat

by Vincent Delecroix · 2025

Small Boat is a stark, first‑person novel that imagines the voice of a French navy officer who fielded distress calls from a migrant dinghy that capsized in the English Channel in November 2021, killing 27 people. Inspired by the real tragedy, the narrative probes the darkness of collective responsibility, the moral weight of inaction, and the ways personal and bureaucratic complacency become complicity. Through a haunting, introspective monologue, Delecroix asks how far we are all responsible for preventable loss of life, turning a news event into a visceral literary parable about humanity, ethics, and the politics of migration.