Soul Searching

Best Novel 2020 Finalist — African Speculative Fiction Society NOMMO Awards

"Soul Searching is a philosophical thriller that engages readers through a combination of complexity, action and imagination. The melange of ideas makes for a rich and intricate tale.”
— Damien Lawardorn, Aurealis #138.

"A quick-paced narrative written with precision and interlaced with registers of the criminal and banal, magical and real, spiritual and technological, futuristic and current.
This debut exemplifies the work of a sensitive writer with a gift for imagining the inner lives and afterlives of humans.”
— Joanna Woods, Africa in Words.

"Soul Searching applies spirituality to mechanics and crime solving, to healing and recovering our humanity, in the timeless universal that cuts across cultures worldwide, but also in the immediate reality of the multicultural local, where time is running out, and people will die."
— Mame Bougouma Diene, Strange Horizons.


Science has learned to understand the soul, and can track souls through this life and beyond.

A specialist unit of the South African police is using a Soul Tracker device in a harrowing search for a serial killer. As Tracker Ruth Hicks and her partner Franklin Banks race to find the killer before the next victim dies, the case becomes frighteningly personal. They begin to question the morality of their methods.

When one's soul can incriminate them before birth, can there ever be justice?

Who can be trusted with the power to look inside the soul?

This science fiction novel by South African author Stephen Embleton has been likened to a mix of Minority Report and Silence of the Lambs, with unique ideas all its own. The thrilling story features a serial killer, new and disturbing technology, and an ancient secret society. And flying cars!