The Emperor of Gladness

THE MILLION-COPY BESTSELLER AND TIKTOK SENSATION
READERS ARE OBSESSED WITH THE EMPEROR OF GLADNESS:
'Read it slowly. Let it wreck you. Then read it again'
'I feel like I lost part of my soul to this book... a contender for my favourite of the year'
'I would give it 6 stars if I could'
'Sad and funny, devastating and quietly celebratory'
'A masterwork of compassion and complexity. A book to sit with, to feel deeply, and to return to'
Desperate college dropout Hai is ready to make a devastating choice until a chance meeting with elderly widow Grazina changes the course of his life, in this achingly beautiful novel about chosen family and second chances
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.
This is an unforgettable story of unexpected friendship and how far we would go to possess one of life's most fleeting mercies: a second chance.
A Most Anticipated Book in Guardian, Financial Times, Sunday Times Style, BBC, GQ, New York Times and AnOther
'A poetic, dramatic and vivid story. It has an epic sweep but it also handles intimacy and love with delicacy and deep originality' COLM TÓIBÍN
'Tender and moving' REBECCA SOLNIT
'A masterwork' BRYAN WASHINGTON

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.