The instant New York Times bestseller • Oprah’s Book Club Pick • Ocean Vuong returns with a bighearted novel about chosen family, unexpected friendship, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive

“Stunning . . . A heartfelt and powerful examination of those living on the fringes of society, and the unique challenges they face to survive and thrive.” —Oprah Winfrey

“Magnificent . . . In writing this book, Vuong may have joined the ranks of an elite few great novelists.” —Leigh Haber, Los Angeles Times

The hardest thing in the world is to live only once…

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 transform Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community on 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 Ocean 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. - (Findaway World Llc)

Booklist Reviews

*Starred Review* Classically trained actor Oh makes an astonishing audiobook debut with MacArthur "Genius" grantee Vuong's aching novel about unlikely friendship and found family. In East Gladness, Connecticut, on September 15, 2009, 19-year-old Hai—a drug-addicted disappointment to his struggling Vietnamese refugee mother—swung one leg over the rail of King Philip's Bridge and decided to jump. He's interrupted by twisted bedsheets flying off a laundry line and an old woman shouting, "You can't die in front of my house, okay?" Grazina ushers him into her home (her life, her heart) and immediately renames him "Labas," meaning "hello" in her native Lithuanian, after an Abbottand-Costello-esque exchange about Hai's homonymic moniker. Hai becomes the octogenarian's live-in caretaker as she succumbs to dementia, haunted by the horrors of Stalin's purges before escaping to the US. During the day, Hai works at "fast-casual chain" HomeMarket with his cousin Sony and a brusquely welcoming crew of misfits. Hai can't go home to his mother, but for at least for a while he is safe amid the rotisserie chickens or inside "a ruined house by a toxic river." Oh creates a remarkably multilayered soundtrack, imbuing each character with unique characterizations: gently desperate Hai, gruffly nurturing Grazina, Hai's exhaustedly hopeful mother, earnestly genuine Sony, exasperated conspiracy theorist Maureen, manipulative Lucas, and many others. Oh single-voicedly elevates Vuong's already immersive fiction into convincing reality. Copyright 2025 Booklist Reviews.