Shortlisted for 2025 International Booker Prize: An excerpt from ‘Small Boat’ by Vincent Delecroix

I didn’t ask you to leave, I said.

It was your idea, and if you didn’t want to get your feet wet, love, you shouldn’t have embarked. I didn’t push you into the water, I didn’t fetch you from your village or field or ruin of a suburb and put you in your wretched leaky boat, and now the water’s up to your ankles, I get it that you’re frightened, and you want me to save you and you’re impatient. You’re counting on me. But I didn’t ask you for any of that. So you’ll just have to grin and bear it and let me get on with my job.

And apparently these thoughts were so strong that I actually spoke them out loud, the first bit, at least, certainly if the recordings are to be believed and there’s no reason not to believe them. I accept that.

While I was at it I should perhaps have added things like “I’m not God Almighty either”, which must have been what was in my mind, and I could have actually said it. I could have said There are guys like you everywhere tonight, forty small boats supposedly sinking at the same time in the...

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