The Emperor of Gladness
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Vintage Publishing
Publishing:5th Jun '25
£20.00
This title is due to be published on 5th June, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
THE MILLION-COPY BESTSELLER AND TIKTOK SENSATION
Ocean Vuong returns with a big-hearted novel about chosen family, unexpected friendship, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive
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.
Praise for Ocean Vuong * On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous *
This is some of the most moving writing I’ve read… The tenderness of the prose feels like a triumph against a world hellbent on embittering the tenderhearted… the truths arrived at in this book are valuable precisely because they are steeped in feeling * New York Times *
Vuong’s determination to see well-trodden ground afresh, with unremitting complexity, is extremely rare... An exciting talent * Sunday Times *
Vuong is a prodigious talent, his handling of words and images both brutal and delicate, his treatment of violence, sex and the body radically clear-eyed * Financial Times *
A stunning, beautiful book... His writing is phenomenal... Simply brilliant * BBC Radio 4 Saturday Review *
A deeply moving book – I welled up roughly every 40 pages… one of the great strengths of this book is the way it elevates the personal into the political. Little Dog’s story is the story of modern America * Daily Telegraph *
Vuong mines his extraordinary family story with passion and beauty… Vuong writes wonderfully -- Tessa Hadley * Guardian *
Utterly captivating writing -- Anthony Cummins * Daily Mail *
A masterpiece: a staggeringly beautiful book.. the Great American Novel. A huge gift to the world -- Max Porter
Reminded me that every word can be an incantation, and that beauty does hard and important work -- Rebecca Solnit
He transforms the emotional, the visceral, the individual into the political in an unforgettable – indeed, gorgeous – novel -- Viet Thanh Nguyen
A marvel -- Marlon James
Luminous, shattering, urgent, necessary -- Celeste Ng
This is one of the best novels I’ve ever read... Ocean Vuong is a master. This book is a masterpiece -- Tommy Orange
ISBN: 9781787335400
Dimensions: 240mm x 156mm x 40mm
Weight: 750g
416 pages