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Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix , translated by Helen Stevenson, is inspired by the actual events surrounding the deaths of 27 migrants who drowned in the English Channel in the early hours of the 24th November 2021.  As the sea overwhelmed the dinghy they had set out in, the migrants’ telephone calls for help and the French call operator’s responses and frequently off the cuff, callous asides, were recorded, and later published by the French media.  The author takes these events as the starting point for a work of fiction. The narrative is voiced in the words of the French naval coastguard - it was her job , she is at pains to tell the police investigator, to assess the calls for help and allocate the rescue centre’s limited resources according to the most urgent need. But as her increasingly defensive arguments begin to unravel, we witness a mind where intrusive images of drowning figures crowd in. Accused of being a monster for her lack of empathy, the accusation is thrown back at us – where is our humanity and what did we do to save the drowning souls ? This is a story which puts all of us in the spotlight – complicit in looking the other way, implicated in readily blaming others, and guilty for not wanting to think too much about where responsibility lies for the deaths of those who felt their limbs grow cold and leaden as the black of night gave way to grey dawn. In an interview with Dua Lipa for her global book club, Service95, Vincent Delecroix observed that "imagination is the first moral faculty". In this work of fiction, he asks us to deploy our own imaginations as fully as we can, before we venture to make any kind of moral judgement. Producer Jill Waters says, "I have rarely if ever finished a recording session so fired up by the energy of a challenging text brought viscerally to life. Small Boat is a gripping portrait of a woman struggling to deflect guilt, deny responsibility and maintain that these deaths - this journey - was not her idea. But every so often her argument collapses in on itself and we glimpse an internal chasm of doubt and fear. Lydia Wilson gives a superb performance, moving between demotic bluster and brittle sarcasm with devastating moments of guileless indifference, whilst all the time shame gnaws at her soul. Small Boat was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025 . It was originally published in 2023 in French by Gallimard as "Naufrage". Read by Lydia Wilson and Tommy Sim’aan (episodes 5 and 6) Written by Vincent Delecroix, translated by Helen Stevenson Abridged and directed by Jill Waters The Waters Company for Â鶹Éç Radio 4