Small Boat: A Guest Post by Helen Stevenson

Inspired by a real tragedy, this gripping and powerful novel examines the moral cost of complicity through the inner life of a coast guard worker who rationalizes her decision not to help stranded refugees. Read on for an exclusive essay from Helen Stevenson on translating Small Boat.

 

A singular, gut-punching parable for our times about complicity in the face of tragedy, based on the true story of a French navy officer who ignored distress calls from migrants drowning in the English Channel.

 

I came across a review of Small Boat in the French Press in December 2023 and straightaway ordered a copy to read. Given how rarely fiction has addressed the global migrant crisis, I was surprised the novel hadn’t attracted more attention, or, at that point, a UK publisher. Like so many people, I was disturbed by the quick turnover of press coverage, the way each calamitous story breaks like a wave, and then washes away, to be replaced by a fresh shocking event. Small Boat was something else - a sustained and committed piece of imaginative fiction.

In the book, Vincent Delecroix, himself a philosopher, as well as novelist, imagined the feelings and the voice of a naval coastguard, an apparently ordinary young woman, accused in the French press  - and later courts – both of failure, on the night of 23^rd November 21^st, 2021, to come to the aid of people in distress, resulting in the loss of 28 lives, and of callous disregard for the migrants’ plight. The author implies that these are accusations we are all a whisker away from. That we’re all responsible for the migrant crisis to degree, not just politicians - who are, after all, only our representatives – a scary thought.

The success of the book took everyone by surprise. Small books by small publishers and unknown writers rarely find the readership they deserve. Even before it was published in the UK, by HopeRoad, it had been longlisted for the Booker International Prize, and later made it onto the shortlist. It provoked a huge amount of discussion  - of itself as a work of literature, of the wider migrant crisis, and of the ability of fiction to reflect and affect the political issues of our time.

People have asked me if translating the book was a harrowing experience. I didn’t feel it was, at the time. It felt like a small thing I could actually do – as it always does, but this time more so - to put myself inside the minds of other people, through the act of translation ( a word that literally means carrying-across). It obviously did nothing to salvage the wreckage of lives that were lost. But if we want change, imagining, empathy, and willingness to think about really difficult issues, are a good place to start.