Sunday book pick: In ‘Small Boat’, no one is at fault when 27 migrants drown in international waters

“I had no more opinion on the migrants than I did on migration policy or the right to asylum, relations between North and South, problems, solutions, the woes of the world, injustice: I was not required to have an opinion on the migrants.”

The troubles of the unnamed narrator in Small Boat begin when, in November 2021, after receiving distress calls from migrants sinking in the sea, she tells them that help is on the way. To her colleague, off the microphone, she says, “You will not be saved.” Some four hours later, with help yet to arrive, she signs off the small boat as “rescued”. Of the 29 migrants onboard, only two survive. The remaining 27, including a young girl, sink to the bottom of the sea, making this “accident” the worst of its kind since the Channel opened in 2018 for the passage of migrants from France to England.

Unlike the rest of us, for whom France is an idyll, a romantic getaway, the migrants, “under no circumstances, barring catastrophe”, would like to be returned to France. In fact, things have been so bad for them there that they are willing to risk it all to be shipped off to England, also famously...

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