Riverstone Around the Globe Book Club - Squirrel Hill

Riverstone Around the Globe is a book club at Squirrel Hill which centralizes global literatures, works in translation, and highlights from the Booker and International Booker prizes. Whether you’re looking to broaden your literary horizons, or otherwise want to read novels you wouldn’t normally find all over social media, this book club is a great introduction to books outside the States.

This book club is led by Riverstone bookseller, Sarah.

The September pick is Small Boat by Vincent Delacroix.

About the book:

In November 2021, an inflatable dinghy carrying migrants from France to the United Kingdom capsized in the Channel causing the death of 27 people on board. Despite receiving numerous calls for help, the French authorities wrongly told the migrants they were in British waters and had to call the British authorities for help. By the time rescue vessels arrived on the scene, all but two of the migrants had died. The narrator of Delecroix's fictional account of the events is the woman who took the calls. Accused of failing in her duty, she refuses to be held more responsible than others for this disaster. Why should she be more responsible than the sea, than the war, than the crises behind these tragedies?

A shocking, moral tale of our times, Small Boat reminds us of the power of fiction to illuminate our darkest crimes.

Host or Publisher Riverstone Books