Wandering Souls

"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

"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 itself, where connection and understanding are hard-won and ultimately redemptive."—Kawai Strong Washburn, author of Sharks in the Time of Saviors

"A haunting exploration of love and leaving told with a quiet longing that grabs you and doesn't let go. Wandering Souls asks what it takes not only to survive unimaginable loss, but to live through it and thrive. Exceptional."—Jenny Tinghui Zhang, author of Four Treasures of the Sky

"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

"Wandering Souls is deeply moving and deeply generous. Pin writes about the Vietnamese diaspora in the UK—its past and its present—with love and care. I cried reading it."—Yara Rodrigues Fowler, author of Stubborn Archivist