Wandering Souls

A Novel

By: Cecile Pin

Narrated by: Aoife Hinds, Ioanna Kimbook, Ainsleigh Barber

This program includes a multicast narration.

Long-listed, Carnegie Medal, 2024

"Aoife Hinds, Ioanna Kimbook, and Ainsleigh Barber perform this stunning debut historical novel, which follows three orphaned Vietnamese refugees."—AudioFile Magazine

"A deeply humane and genre-defying work of love and uncompromising hope."—Ocean Vuong

A boldly imagined debut novel about three Vietnamese siblings who seek refuge in the UK, expanding into a luminous meditation on ancestry and love

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, Thanh, and Minh begin a perilous 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, and sixteen-year-old Anh becomes the caretaker for her two younger brothers overnight.

In the years that follow, Anh and her brothers resettle in the UK and confront their new identities as refugees, first in overcrowded camps and resettlement centers and then, later, in a modernizing London plagued by social inequality and raging anti-immigrant sentiment. Anh works in a clothing factory to pay their bills. Minh loiters about with fellow unemployed high school dropouts. Thanh, the youngest, plays soccer with his British friends after class. As they mature, each sibling reckons with survivor’s guilt, unmoored by their parents’ absence. With every choice they make, their paths diverge further, until it’s unclear if love alone can keep them together.

Told through lyrical narrative threads, historical research, voices from lost family, and notes by an unnamed narrator determined to chart their fate, Wandering Souls captures the lives of a family marked by war and loss yet relentless in the pursuit of a better future. With urgency and precision, it affirms that the most important stories are those we claim for ourselves, establishing Cecile Pin as a masterful new literary voice.

A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt & Company.

©2023 Cecile Pin (P)2023 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

"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 Saviours

“With concision and clarity, the author shows a deep understanding of how upheaval can splinter families.”—Publishers Weekly

Incredible Story

This is an incredibly sad account of three siblings and their journey out of Vietnam and to the UK. I wept out loud at the experiences they and other refugees experienced and am very interested to read more about Vietnam history. This books says so much about loss, generational trauma, and healing…it is sad but beautifully written. I’m glad this book exists.

Great storytelling

What an amazing and heart-wrenching story. I couldn’t stop playing it until I was done. Great narration as well. This is a must-read

Last few chapters

It’s a solid story from someone who didn’t have first hand experience, but I can tell in the first chapter that the author lacks experience and knowledge of how a Vietnamese family in Vietnam operates. The narration ruined it, the narrator’s voice was fine, but I winced each time any Vietnamese name or phrase was pronounced, I could barely make out what the narrator was trying to say. Her narration as Margarett Thatcher was so bad. It’s a solid first attempt that could develop further. The last few chapters were the best part of the book.

Family being together all the time

Well written novel but unfortunately very sad .I loved the main n character and how she stood and kept the family together, despite the fact that she was almost a child.