The Emperor of Gladness

A masterful story of friendship and how much we’re willing to risk to possess one of life’s most treasured mercies- a second chance

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

Ocean Vuong returns with an achingly beautiful novel about chosen family, unexpected friendship, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive

One summer evening in the town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on a bridge, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond.

The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which our lives are changed by the most unexpected of people. When Hai takes a job at a diner to support himself and Grazina, his fellow workers become the family he didn’t expect to find. United by desperation and circumstance, and existing on the fringes of society, together they bear witness to each other’s survival.

‘Some of the most beautiful writing I’ve experienced in my lifetime’ OPRAH WINFREY

‘Perfectly tuned… May well be the first millennial Great American Novel’ ArtReview

‘A fine-grained social panorama driven by the developing camaraderie of an ensemble cast bonded in precariousness and pain’ Observer

‘His most vivid, ambitious work yet’ Dazed

‘A poetic, dramatic and vivid story. It has an epic sweep but it also handles intimacy and love with delicacy and deep originality’ COLM T IB N

‘This stunning book moved me so much, I fell in love with its characters and grieved their absence in my life when I turned the last page’ CAITR ONA BALFE

‘Tender and moving’ REBECCA SOLNIT

‘A masterwork’ BRYAN WASHINGTON

Author Biography

Ocean Vuong is the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collections Night Sky with Exit Wounds and Time is a Mother, as well as the New York Times bestselling novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. A recipient of the 2019 MacArthur \“Genius\” Grant, he is also the winner of the Whiting Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize. His writings have been featured in Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, Nation, New Republic, New Yorker, and the New York Times. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he currently splits his time between Northampton, Massachusetts, and New York City.