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The Emperor of Gladness

ISBN 
9781787335417
Format 
Trade Paperback
Recommended Price 
R390.00
Published 
May 2025
About the book: 
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.
Other titles by this author 
About the Author

Ocean Vuong is the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collections  Night Sky with Exit Wounds  and  Time is a Mother,  as well as the  New York Times  bestselling novel  On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous.  A recipient of the 2019 MacArthur "Genius" Grant, he is also the winner of the Whiting Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize. His writings have been featured in  The Atlantic, Harper's Magazine, The Nation, The New Republic, The New Yorker, and the New York Times.  Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he currently splits his time between Northampton, Massachusetts, and New York City.

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