wandering souls

Wandering Souls

Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal of Excellence in Fiction 2024

Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2023

“Wandering Souls is a poetic, heartbreaking, and ultimately triumphant celebration of the human spirit. Casting well-known history in new light, Pin offers a capacious rendering of the love, loss, and hope of migration. Stunning and unforgettable.” ―Qian Julie Wang, New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Country

There are the goodbyes and then the fishing out of the bodies―everything in between is speculation.

After the last American troops leave Vietnam, siblings Anh, Minh, and Thanh journey to Hong Kong with the promise that their parents and younger siblings will soon follow. But when tragedy strikes, the three children are left orphaned. Reckoning with survivor’s guilt, the siblings are unmoored by their parents’ absence. After a twist of fate lands the trio in Britain, their paths diverge further with every choice they’re forced to make, until it’s unclear if love alone can keep them together.

Wandering Souls captures the lives of a family marked by loss yet relentlessly pursuing a better future. It affirms that the most important stories are those we claim for ourselves, establishing Cecile Pin as a masterful new literary voice.