Ocean Vuong with Putsata Reang

“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 next year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond. Built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, their unexpected friendship develops the power to transform Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community on the brink. In his highly anticipated second novel, The Emperor of Gladness , award-winning author Ocean Vuong invites readers into a lyrical depiction of the ways human connection can provide crucial infrastructure on the fringes of society. Following the cycles of history, memory, and time, Vuong aims to show the profound ways in which love, labor, and loneliness have contributed to the foundations of American life and the stories we tell ourselves and each other in order to survive. Emerging from the messiness of reality and the collected traumas of endurance is a brave, heartfelt epic on the impacts of found and chosen family. Grounded in the lived experiences of his characters and elevated with a dextrous grasp on prose, Vuong invites readers on an exploration of intergenerational bonds and self-discovery. The Emperor of Gladness presents a tender yet unblinking approach to trauma and resilience in a story of loss, hope, and how far we would go to possess one of life’s most fleeting mercies — a second chance.