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.
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