Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal of Excellence in Fiction 2024 Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2023 “ Wandering Soul s 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. PEOPLE's "Book of the Week," April 10, 2023 edition British Vogue, "8 Sparkling Debut Novels to Brighten Up Your Winter" Zibby Mag, The Most Exciting Debut Novels of 2023 Zibby Mag, Zibby’s Most Anticipated Books of 2023 Goodreads, 105 of the Buzziest Debut Novels of the New Year Tattered Cover Book Store, The Most Anticipated Debut Books of 2023 Debutiful, The Most Anticipated Debut Books of 2023 GoBookMart, "10 Best Debut Authors of March 2023" American Booksellers Association, April 2023 Indie Next Pick " Wandering Souls is more than a story of sacrifice and familial duty. The author has greater ambitions, first signaled in the intricate story structure she builds. . . . What emerges is something special―a polyvocal novel, an essay on inherited trauma and a quiet metafiction about telling stories we don’t own." ― Eric Nguyen, New York Times Book Review " Wandering Souls is immersive, creative and deeply emotional." ― Good Morning America "The glimmering tale―told through a host of perspectives, including Anh’s and later her daughter’s―illustrates the importance of telling one’s own story." ― TIME "Pin movingly explores how their lives are shaped―and warped―by larger historical forces, and then how these lost souls struggle to move through denial and into some tentative form of acceptance." ― Los Angeles Times "Pin's prose is quietly powerful, her voice assured, her love for this fictional family apparent on every page." ― Star Tribune "A debut in name only, Wandering Souls is an astute and sure-footed excavation of family, selfhood, and loss in the shadow of colonial violence. It is also a deeply humane and genre-defying work of love and uncompromising hope through a long-overdue portrayal of Vietnamese life in the UK. A mighty achievement." ― Ocean Vuong , New York Times bestselling author of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous and Time is a Mother “A tender and rigorous debut from the new Didion of the Asian diaspora.“ ― Kirkus Reviews "Powerful . . . a bold debut that breaks new ground in telling the story of the Vietnamese 'boat people' who landed in Britain, a neglected subject in fiction―until now." ― The Times , UK “I raced through it. Beautiful, brilliant, unflinching―it deals with family trauma in a way I’ve been trying to figure out my entire career.“ ― R. F. Kuang , New York Times bestselling author of Babel “ 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 “ Wandering Souls profoundly grapples with how people survive and remake themselves and their communities after tragedy. The novel asks: What does remembrance require? What are the costs of forgetting? And is there such a thing as moving on? Cecile Pin presents no easy answers. Instead, she has created a form to contain all of the contradiction, heartbreak, hope, and tender humanity.“ ― Nadia Owusu , author of Aftershocks “Clear-hearted and moving, Wandering Souls tells one of the most important stories of our times, and you can feel, as you read, all it has taken Cecile Pin to write it.” ― Lucy Caldwell , author of Intimacies " Wandering Souls achieves a rare feat, taking a familiar story and making it something entirely new. With language at once both concise and gorgeous, Pin opens a window into questions of duty, identity, and love. Here migration is less a desire for survival than a journey into the thundering heart of family itsel