From the New York Times bestselling poet and author of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong returns with his heart-rending novel about friendship as salvation and the stories to which we cling in the face of anguish.
On a late summer evening, in the derelict town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai finds himself standing on the edge of a bridge in the pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shouting across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, a widow, who though slowly succumbing to dementia, sees a kinship in Hai and offers him a home in exchange for companionship. Over the course of the year, the two unlikely friends develop a profound relationship, one built of empathy, understanding, and honesty, and capable of altering Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and traumas rooted in Vietnam. Bearing witness to the grievous battles others face forces Hai to confront why he so often ran from his own.

The Emperor of Gladness is a deeply affecting and poignant story about the fugitive in all of us, and the narratives we each tell ourselves to survive. Writing with visceral lyricism and resounding wisdom, Vuong descends into the innermost depths of human existence and connection that thread us together. At its very heart is a fervently brave and compassionate epic about what it means to exist on the fringes of American society and reality, and to collectively reckon with our familial wounds and the achingly painful memories that haunt us.