Each month on euradio, in Turning The Page, our team will be interviewing people from the book world.
We begin our discussion of Small Boat, by Vincent Delecroix, by explaining that the story is based on real events. In November 2021, an inflatable dinghy carrying migrants across the Channel from France to the UK lost power and gradually filled with water, leading to the deaths of 27 out of the 29 people on board. Despite multiple distress calls, the French authorities failed to act, wrongly believing that the dinghy was in British waters and thus the responsibility of the UK coastguard. By the time rescue vessels reached the scene, only two migrants had survived.
Delecroix tells the story through the voice of the woman who took those calls, prompting a central question: does this tragedy exemplify the banality of evil or are these actions any of us could have been responsible for if we had been in her shoes?
