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 MILLION-COPY BESTSELLER AND TIKTOK SENSATION

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

'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

One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to alter Hai's relationship to himself, his family, and a community at the brink.

Following the cycles of history, memory, and time, The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which love, labor, and loneliness form the bedrock of American life. At its heart is a brave epic about what it means to exist on the fringes of society and to reckon with the wounds that haunt our collective soul. Hallmarks of Vuong's writing - formal innovation, syntactic dexterity, and the ability to twin grit with grace through tenderness - are on full display in this story of loss, hope, and how far we would go to possess one of life's most fleeting mercies- a second chance.

'Tender and moving' REBECCA SOLNIT

'A masterwork' BRYAN WASHINGTON

About the Author

Ocean Vuong is the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds, winner of the Whiting Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize. His writings have also been featured in The Atlantic, Harper's, The Nation, New Republic, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. In 2019 he was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he currently lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he serves as an Assistant Professor of English at UMass-Amherst. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is his first novel.

Industry Reviews

[An] innovative, playful novel’ - Financial Times, *Books to Look Out For 2025*

Sad, haunting but ultimately hopeful this is a gut punch and an warm embrace rendered out of poetic, tender prose - AnOther, *Books to Look Out For 2025*

Tender and moving, The Emperor of Gladness is about people on the margins of society and sanity. To my surprise and delight, Vuong’s novel is also wryly, subtly, wittily - and sometimes outrageously - a comedy as well as a tragedy - Rebecca Solnit

A masterwork - Bryan Washington

Remarkable... A sui generis take on the surprising and cruel ways violence is passed on across generations - Kirkus Starred Review

[A] heartbreaking epic… Written in Vuong’s inimitable prose…[it] will doubtless be counted among the great American novels - Bookseller