Dua’s Monthly Read for July 2024
“I didn’t ask you to leave.”
“The opening line of Vincent Delecroix’s masterful short novel Small Boat gains increasing significance as he spins together threads of a story which is as shocking as it is familiar.
“Small Boat, which was shortlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize, fictionalises events around the real-life drowning of 27 people in the English Channel in November 2021. Those who lost their lives – always referred to as ‘migrants’ in the press – were crowded into a sinking inflatable dinghy and made increasingly desperate calls for help – in French, in English, and in Kurdish. But no help came.
“Vincent takes us inside the mind of the French radio operator receiving these distress calls. I was deeply shocked that, instead of scrambling to help the drowning people, the operator casually responds to their calls for help with that frank opening line – “I didn’t ask you to leave” – as the phone goes dead. Her attitude seems inhumane, but perhaps it is reflective of society’s detached attitude to ‘migrant’ deaths at sea, and the dehumanisation that allows us to turn away as innocent men, women and children drown on a pitch-black night in the English Channel.
“Was she just doing her job? Or have we all lost our humanity? These are questions asked repeatedly in Small Boat as the story unfolds, and the answer is not an easy one to stomach. These aren’t just ‘migrants’ or ‘refugees’, they are people – with names, faces and stories, united by their desperation and determination to escape conflict, persecution or poverty. As conflicts continue to force people away from their home countries across the globe, this book pushes us to think: will we help them? Or will we turn away as the small boats continue to sink and bodies of the innocent wash up on beaches on both sides of the Channel?
This book challenged me profoundly. It moved me, and stayed with me. It’s not an easy read – but as our politics descend into hate-mongering and point-scoring, it’s an essential story that needs to be told.” – Dua Lipa
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