Books from France

One night, a small boat carrying migrants across the English Channel begins to sink. Desperate passengers call for help again and again, but the rescue they need never comes in time. Twenty-seven people die. At the centre of Vincent Delecroix’s Small Boat is the woman who answered those distress calls—and who must now confront her role in the tragedy. Inspired by the real-life Channel disaster of November 2021, this powerful novella unfolds through the perspective of an unnamed French rescue operator who insists that she alone cannot be held responsible. As she revisits the night’s events, her attempts to justify herself expose the uncomfortable distance between following procedures and doing what is morally right. Delecroix transforms a devastating news story into an unsettling examination of guilt, indifference, and collective responsibility. Who is to blame when a human life is lost? An individual, a system, a border—or a society that has learned to look away? Shortlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize, Small Boat is a brief but haunting work that challenges readers to consider what it means to witness suffering and choose whether to act.

Set in Paris, Standing Heavy is a witty, politically charged novel about African immigrants working as security guards in a society that often overlooks their presence. Through the interconnected experiences of Ferdinand, Ossiri, and Kassoum, three men from Côte d’Ivoire navigating life in France across different decades, Gauz’ explores the realities of undocumented work, racial discrimination, and the enduring consequences of colonialism. Drawing on the security guards’ observations of shoppers, wealthy passers-by, and everyday consumer habits, the novel exposes the contradictions of a society where the people responsible for protecting luxury stores remain largely invisible themselves. Its narrative moves between the 1960s, 1990s, and 2010s, connecting individual lives to France’s changing immigration policies and its complicated relationship with Africa. Combining sharp humour, social observation, and historical reflection, Gauz’ challenges conventional ideas about belonging, labour, and power. The novel offers a distinctive perspective on the immigrant experience, showing how those positioned at the margins of society can see its inequalities more clearly than those at its centre. It was shortlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize.

Some families inherit houses, photographs, and heirlooms. Others inherit silences. When Naïma, a young French woman of Algerian descent, begins exploring her family history, she discovers how little she knows about the country her grandparents left behind. Her grandfather, Ali, once owned land in Algeria but fled to France after the Algerian War of Independence. Her father, Hamid, grew up determined to become French, leaving painful memories and unanswered questions buried in the past. Spanning three generations and seven decades, The Art of Losing follows a family shaped by colonialism, displacement, and the struggle to belong. As Naïma begins uncovering the truth about her ancestors, she must confront a history that is both deeply personal and politically complicated. What does it mean to inherit a past you never experienced? And can you claim an identity when the stories that might explain it have been lost? Moving between Algeria and France, Alice Zeniter explores the invisible burdens passed from parents to children: the languages forgotten, the memories suppressed, and the connections that survive despite distance. Winner of the 2022 International Dublin Literary Award, this sweeping family saga is a powerful meditation on exile, belonging, and the stories we need to understand ourselves.