The Emperor of Gladness
  • Published: 5 June 2025
  • ISBN: 9781529945881
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $38.00

The Emperor of Gladness

Formats & editions
Tr. Paperback
13 May 2025
EBook
15 May 2025
Audiobook
5 Jun 2025
Hardback
15 Jun 2025
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A masterful story of friendship and how much we’re willing to risk to possess one of life’s most treasured mercies: a second chance

The Emperor of Gladness follows a wayward young man in New England who, out of sheer chance, becomes the caretaker for an 82-year-old widow living with dementia. 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 masterful story of friendship and how much we’re willing to risk to possess one of life’s most treasured mercies: a second chance.
  • Published: 5 June 2025
  • ISBN: 9781529945881
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $38.00
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About the author

Ocean Vuong

Ocean Vuong is the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds, winner of the Whiting Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize. His writings have also been featured in The Atlantic, Harper's, The Nation, New Republic, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. In 2019 he was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he currently lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he serves as an Assistant Professor of English at UMass-Amherst. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is his first novel.

portrait photo of Ocean Vuong

Also by Ocean Vuong

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
Night Sky with Exit Wounds
See all

Praise for The Emperor of Gladness

[An] innovative, playful novel’

Financial Times, *Books to Look Out For 2025*

Sad, haunting but ultimately hopeful this is a gut punch and an warm embrace rendered out of poetic, tender prose

AnOther, *Books to Look Out For 2025*

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

A masterwork

Bryan Washington

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

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