Dima fled war and torture in Syria. Semhar is running from conscription in Eritrea. Shoshana was driven from Nigeria by climate change and hunger. Now the three women wait on the Libyan shore to board a crowded migrant boat heading for Europe, and the safety they long for. Three modern-day odysseys. Three journeys through unimaginable pain and hardship in the hope of reaching safety. Three stories of struggle and bravery that reach a dramatic and deadly climax in the middle of the Mediterranean sea....

"Plunges us into the hell lived by the hundreds of passengers in the hold of a ship tossed on a furious sea. The story full of twists keeps the reader breathless... Thankfully amid all this misfortune, solidarity is always present, like a breath of oxygen" - Le Figaro

"Masterful... The force of this novel, and its evocative power, come from the author's willingness to turn this tragedy into literature, not the sort of novel that simply pours pity on victims, but one which makes you think, and which makes the characters feel so human, so close that you ask yourself this question: 'What if it was me who had to sell everything to board that boat of misery?'" - Tahar Ben Jelloun, Le Point

"Three women tossed on the waves of exile... An essential book" - Le Rendez-vous des Livres

"A dazzling display... The shadows we call 'migrants' nowadays prove their courage" - Marianne

"Literature has the capacity to reveal the human story behind statistics. It is Louis-Philippe Dalembert's genius to give personalities, families and loves to the passengers on trawler that sank in the Mediterranean... [The story] races along... A poignant and terrifyingly well researched book" - La Croix

"One of the most imaginative writers of his generation" - Edwidge Danticat, author of Breath, Eyes, Memory

"This richly textured and sweeping novel... follows three migrant women on their perilous journey across the Mediterranean to reach the Italian island of Lampedusa... Deeply affecting" - Publishers Weekly

"'The diversity of refugee experiences - from civil war to indigence - is the thread that runs throughout this novel that recreates the stories of three women travelling on a trawler from Libya to seek new lives in Europe... A shocking eye-opener'" - Morning Star