The Emperor of Gladness

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.


THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

College dropout Hai doesn’t know how to face the future until a chance meeting with elderly widow Grazina changes his life.

One late summer evening in the town of East Gladness, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow.

From this moment, his second chance begins. Over the course of the year, Hai’s story takes new and unexpected turns, as his life-altering bond with Grazina transforms his relationship to the community, his family and, most powerfully of all, to himself.

‘Heartbreaking’ Guardian

‘Dramatic and vivid’ Colm Tóibín

‘Beautiful’ Oprah Winfrey

‘His most vivid, ambitious work yet’ Dazed

(C) Ocean Vuong 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

Critics Review

A fine-grained social panorama driven by the developing camaraderie of an ensemble cast bonded in precariousness and pain
Observer
Depicts the emotions of its protagonists with a sensitivity and lusciousness… contains moments of almost unbearable poignancy
Guardian
Firmly grounded and perfectly tuned… With its poetic morsels, ambivalent love for the rural northeast, and many-layered immigrant stories, The Emperor of Gladness may well be the first millennial Great American Novel
ArtReview
Heartbreaking, heartwarming yet unsentimental, and savagely comic all at the same time, The Emperor of Gladness is about just how wobbly things can become
Guardian
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
His most vivid, ambitious work yet
Dazed
Remarkable... A sui generis take on the surprising and cruel ways violence is passed on across generations
Kirkus Starred Review
[A] heartbreaking epic… Witten in Vuong’s inimitable prose…[it] will doubtless be counted among the great American novels
Bookseller
A masterwork
Bryan Washington
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
Caitríona Balfe

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