The Emperor of Gladness

by Ocean Vuong

Ocean Vuong returns with an achingly beautiful 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.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Book Club, LGBT, Audiobook, Queer

Audiobook

First published May 13, 2025

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 American Book Award and the MacArthur “Genius Grant," he has also worked as a line cook, tobacco harvester, nursing home volunteer, and fast-food server, the latter becoming inspiration for The Emperor of Gladness. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he currently splits his time between Northampton, Massachusetts and New York City.

Reviews

[emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

new ocean vuong novel? i used to pray for times like these.

his debut is one of my favorite books of all time.

this is one of my biggest disappointments in years.

i am not always a  poetry fan, but i do love how poets write prose: each word thoughtfully selected, each sentence beautiful and purposeful, the accumulation stunning.

i've since read some of vuong's poetry, and haven't felt that same way. and this book didn't do that for me either.

i can only describe this in creativity 101 terms: this felt like it was telling me, not showing me. i wanted depth. i wanted the searing emotion i found in the last book.

i didn't get it.

this felt (forgive the pun) like a lot of things on paper: a Moving And Affecting Portrait, an award-winner, a crossover bestseller.

but it didn't feel any deeper than marketing copy.

bottom line: this was a very long blurb.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fuck a hot girl summer, it's looking like depressing liggabit spring 😔

[Sahil Javed]

so 2025 is a year for crying then, yeah?

[Maddy ✨ ~The Verse Vixen {AFK brb} · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Sometimes you don’t just read a book, you bleed through it!"

My second five-star book of the year so far, and the magic of it still lingers,
like an unsolved riddle in the back of my mind.
One minute I’m revising Theory, the next I’m sobbing over a boy on a bridge..
I got the ARC mid-finals. I wanted calm. I got cracked open like a walnut.
I am unwell, I am in awe!!
📌 full thoughts pending emotional clarity.
until then: this book owns me!!

[Meike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Arrghhhh... I applaud Ocean Vuong for shining a light on the mundane lives of contemporary working class Americans, for giving them diginity and grace in beautifully rendered sentences, for evoking atmosphere with perceptive details. Also, for the life of me, I couldn't get into this meandering text. Our protagonist is 19-year-old Hai, a queer Vietnamese-American who lives in a small town called East Gladness, Connecticut. Standing on a bridge contemplating suicide, he is stopped by Grazina, a Lithuanian-born elderly woman suffering from dementia, and becomes her caretaker.

This lengthy novel features all kinds of topics, from queer awakening to the immigrant experience to drug addiction etc.pp., but to me, the most captivating aspect is the way Vuong renders the aspect of dependent work, so the kind where you rent out your body and/or skills to receive the necessary means to survive. Hai works in a diner, where different human relationhip dynamics play out, where work is hard and demanding. A visit to the slaughterhouse that produces their product points to wider nets of exploitation on which first-world living circumstances rest. Our protagonist builds a chosen family that gives him stability in a brutal, precarious world.

There is hope at the center of this text that starts with a new friendship between a teenager and a 82-year-old, and the poetic language sometimes ventures on the ethereal. Still, this is a novel for those of us who enjoy lingering in densely captured atmospheres and slow descriptive scenes, which means: It's not for me. Vuong's contemplative streak is clearly part of his strength though: It's not you, Ocean, it's me. You're a great, great talent.

[jocelyn • coolgalreading · Rating 5 out of 5]

for fuck's sake, man.

[Léa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ocean Vuong try not to make me cry challenge...

I'm endlessly astounded by the way Ocean Vuong is able to put the aching, joyousness and mundanity of being human in a way that feels as melancholic and raw as it does beautiful, and this was absolutely no different. The Emperor of Gladness is an astounding story on two people living on the fringes of society (the elderly and the young adult) and how their differences are exactly what make them similar. I'll be thinking about this one forever, please read it

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

ocean vuong really said, what if i emotionally waterboarded you, made it hauntingly beautiful and poetic, forced you to spiral about your immigrant mom and grandma with dementia, and then quietly put you back together with just enough hope to make you want to keep living?

still deciding on my rating, but i am keeping it at 4 stars for now.
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WE'RE GETTING READY FOR SAD GIRL SUMMER WITH THIS ONE!! BR WITH BEST GIRLS ANH AND CHES!!

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OMGGG I FORGOT THIS CAME OUT TODAY 😭 i need to clear my crs asap now

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i’m ready to be destroyed again. almost one more month!! once i get my hands on this, i already know i will eat up those 416 pages in under 24 hours

[ELLIAS (elliasreads)]

ready for my soul to break open yet again....

[Shawn McComb · Rating 5 out of 5]

10 STAR BOOK !!!

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a book about 19 yr old Hai, a Vietnamese American, college dropout, freshly out of drug rehab… living in Connecticut and at the start of the story he is standing on a bridge ready to jump.
An old lady living in a dilapidated house at the river’s edge spies him and calls out to him.. he goes to the house and is talked into staying.
She is 82 yr old Grazina Vitkus a Lithuanian immigrant who had raised her family there in that house and now deals with dementia… she asks Hai to stay and take care of her which is great for him .. he has nowhere to go as he is lying to his mother about being in medical school.
Hai also gets a job part time at a HomeMarket fast food joint where this group of people becomes family.. just like Grazina..
There is a lot of heartbreak here but also much humor
in the way Hai takes care of Grazina when she’s in the throws of dementia and also the workers at HomeMarket taking care of each other … so endearing.

[Raymond · Rating 2 out of 5]

So far, one of worst novel/book I have read this year. This novel was on several best book lists & Oprah’s Book Club. However, I really did not enjoy reading it. The protagonist is a compulsive lying suicidal gay Asian boy name Hai who lived for a while with an old Lithuanian woman name Grazina who has dementia. The daily life of Hai & Grazina makes up the main premise of the book. Some of the interactions between them were touching & sweet. While most of their dialogue were quite boring, a little confusing, & even weird/uncomfortable. Most of the other characters in the novel worked at a local eatery. A lot of the subplots involving them really didn’t make a lot of sense. The stories involving women wrestling, diamond crusade, Miss Magician, etc. felt pointless & irrelevant to the storyline. I thought the ending was unsatisfactory cause it was sad & predictable. I really don’t feel like this novel deserves all the hype & no, I would not recommend it.

[ଘRory · Rating 4 out of 5]

IF READING MADE ME SUCH A CRAZY BITCH OCEAN VUONG SHOULD PAY FOR MY REHAB STAY ...AND THE PILLS .

[Angela M · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is the same beautiful writing in this novel that I found in On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. I read the first 5 pages and then read them again because the prose is breathtaking. It’s almost hard to believe that English is not his native language, but it’s clear that Ocean Vuong was born to write . I should read some of his poetry.

The is the story of a young man, a Vietnamese refugee, trying to heal and discover himself, looking for salvation from the drug addiction he can’t quite recover from, suffering the pain of deceiving his mother and not quite being able to tell her the truth and hurt her again. Hai connects with an elderly Lithuanian woman named Grazina who is on the brink of dementia with her memories and grief, a survivor of war who saves Hai from taking his life. A beautiful and unexpected bond is formed between them as he becomes her care giver.

A group of coworkers at a chain restaurant, misfits in their own right carrying their own burdens become part of his make shift family along with his mentally disabled cousin Sony. Their lives are messy and miserable at times, but somehow they make do, as these ordinary messy lives are filled with the extraordinary will to keep on going everyday. They define what family is in a different light, yet exude the caring and love of what family means. Caring and connection, people touching each other’s lives in unexpected ways. The American dream isn’t always success in the ways we expect it might be. Sometimes it’s just surviving and connecting and knowing kindness.

The dedication at the end of the book “In memory of Grazina J. Verselis (1925-2014)” had me wanting to know more about the inspiration for this book. This NYT interview made the story more meaningful telling of the real Grazina and so much more about why he wrote this book.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/03/ma...

[George Fenwick · Rating 2 out of 5]

prose is beautiful, but the plot is so overly trite and forced that it all gets lost in the weeds. main character is unformed and inconsistent and plot is full of contrivances and logic leaps. pretty punishing experience

[lexluvsb00ks · Rating 2 out of 5]

is this is a good book ? maybe . but did i enjoy reading it ? no

[Vartika · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hai, the protagonist of Ocean Vuong's sophomore novel, wants to write a book some day, one that safely holds all of his favourite things. He likely never will, caught amidst the drudgery of living, and making a living, at the superfrayed edges of American society. But Vuong can, and The Emperor of Gladness is his attempt at preserving Hai's memories and experiences against the erasure that awaits them, against the descent into oblivion despite which his people – poor, broken, infirm and neglected – continue to survive.

We first meet Hai teetering at the edge of a bridge in the backwaters of East Gladness, Connecticut, ashamed to return home to his mother, when he is accosted by an elderly woman. Grazina is alone and battling dementia, but in that moment she throws him a lifeline, and Hai agrees to keep on as her caretaker in exchange for food and shelter. The unlikely pair soon form a tender, life-altering bond, one that changes Hai's relationship with his himself, his family, and a post-industrial community beset by invisiblised crises.

This is a thematically complex novel: Vuong here refracts critiques of of labour, consumption, enforced precarity, late capitalism and the American empire against a study of human connection, using the space created by friendship and found family to fold the margins into the centre and remind us of who and what is left behind in our scramble for infinite growth and economic progress. His characters are people who have been written-off from the American dream: fast food chain gig workers, drug addicts, poor immigrants, the disabled and the elderly, none of whom are afforded a place in the veneered world they are enlisted to maintain. Though these connections are only transient – though these characters' very lives and livelihoods are rendered disposable by the systems that govern them – Vuong here tries capturing glimpses of the beauty they create despite a pervasive social, political, and existential stasis.

The trajectories of Vuong's characters intersect top with broader themes of memory and war: Grazina's dementia often transports her back to her fraught youth, while Hai contends with his in the present – East Gladness is a nowhereland stricken with a poverty-enforced drug crisis, an insidious war taking prisoners in his neck of the woods. Hai's cousin, Sony, meanwhile, finds solace and escape in the memorialisation of a different war, one whose seemingly distant spectre continues to haunt the state of their nation. Amidst these scenarios of conflict and forgetting, the author invites readers to pay attention to what draws his characters to each other and how it gives them the strength to keep going.

Though the book is brilliant in scope – expansive and intimate at once – something about it doesn't quite work. Vuong's prose, poetic, diaphanous and carefully cultivated elsewhere, seems here to have gome uncontrollably florid in a way that highlights rather than cushions the flaws of his storytelling. There are several points here – moments intended to be light, to afford grace and complexity to lives otherwise glossed over – where the writing goes from being the vehicle of narration to narrative itself, presenting itself such that its own form is difficult to look past; there are also sections that could be funny, or heartwarming, but which limit themselves in their corniness. And then the loose tiles in the floor – for instance, the way mother and son never run into each other despite coexisting in the same small town – make the whole feel somewhat unbalanced and uneven, somewhat rushed, a little inattentive in its attentiveness.

I'm certain many readers will wholeheartedly love The Emperor of Gladness. I too loved the premise and believed in the promise of it, but in the end there was no crossing over into what it attempted to create and couldn't quite deliver.

[ana (ananascanread) · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book said 'what if surviving felt like poetry?' and then ripped my ribs open in the kindest way possible.
it’s not a redemption arc. it’s a holding-on arc. a trying-anyway arc.
i kept stopping just to breathe. to grieve. to feel.
ocean vuong doesn’t write characters, he writes tenderness in human form.

[enzoreads · Rating 5 out of 5]

je suis en train de chialer comme une merde j’arrive pas à m’arrêter

[Summer · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Emporer of Gladness is a story about so many things. It’s a story about grace, connection, the unexpected, second chances, found family and how the small moments in life are the most profound. It is also a story about working class Amerixa and the unattainable American dream, how the hard work we put in doesn't always pay off. With themes of generational trauma, the immigrant experience, addiction, mortality makes this truly a remarkable work of literature.

And of course, the lyrical prose that readers love Ocean Vuong for is on full display in The Emperor of Gladness. His words are profoundly deep and breathtakingly beautiful. The way he describes his characters and settings is a visceral sensory experience

Ocean Vuong is such a gift. This is my 3rd read by the author and it lived up to my high expectations. I listened to the audiobook version which is read by James Aaron Oh who did a fantastic job. If you decide to pick this one up, I highly recommend this format.

The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong was published on May 13 so it is available now!

[Donna · Rating 1 out of 5]

I tried to like this book. Mostly I just wanted it to end.

[Haley Graham · Rating 5 out of 5]

we found it, folks. this is IT.

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all]]

Oh I am SO excited to sob along to this

[Celine · Rating 4 out of 5]

a devastatingly beautiful book, written very obviously by a poet, which lost a bit of direction towards the end.

there’s so much heartbreak, reflection and life injected into these pages. books don’t have to be perfect to change your life, and this one was a great example of that.

[Marialyce · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ok the main character is a gay Asian who is trying to quit drugs. He lives with an old Lithuanian women who has dementia. He works at a fast food restaurant where the workers are very low on the social strata. Lots of f bombs!

Playing imaginary games with the old woman of wartime issues
Flowery language
Don’t know if the author wants to be a poet or an author!

No discernible storyline.

I think I am done!

Oh and animal cruelty! 😡

[sigh · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nobody writes trite flowery meaningless prose and narratives like Vuong

[Gerhard · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lacerating indictment of Trump's current anti-immigrant agenda versus what America once represented about being a haven for the huddled displaced, this is a devastating read about ordinary people trying to survive and be 'good'. Not in that order. Also, it's an elegy for Star Wars and it's impact on the American Dream. A New Hope, indeed. I had to stop reading in many places just to catch my breath, pause, and reflect how late-stage capitalism, the emperor of the title, continues to consume itself, until nothing is left. Vuong's register, cadence, dialogue, colloquialisms, humour, balanced against incandescent nature writing and omniscient overviews, transforns this eminently readable novel into a great work of art that also defines our current fucked up world. Urgent, necessary, empathetic, I cannot recommend this highly enough as a measured and effective antidote to the current anti-liberal, anti-humanist agenda being concretised by an increasingly fascistic America. Trump is doing his best to emulate America's version of the British Empire's 'red map'. But he forgets the import of BRICS, etc. and the growing influence of the Global South, which in all likelihood will bypass America as it implodes. And we won't give a damn.

[cheska · Rating 3 out of 5]

⟢ 3.5 stars

the hardest thing in the world is to only live once. but it's beautiful here, even the ghosts agree.

reading this felt like standing beside someone through their undoing, watching them unravel piece by piece, only to gather themselves again. the emperor of gladness follows nineteen year old hai, who is quietly ready to give up on the world — until he meets grazina, an elderly widow on the brink of being forgotten and forgetting. what follows is not a journey towards fixing hai, rather a a year of bearing witness. his world is fragile, yet it begins to shift itself through empathy, small acts of kindness, and the refuge of a found family.

i adored this book, and i love that ocean vuong wrote it. however, something felt incomplete. despite taking my time with it, a part of me feels like i don't exactly know enough about hai. i spent so much time with him, yet he still feels like a bit of a stranger. which is not what i was expecting, especially in a character-driven book. the middle part also felt very long and repetitive, a bit gratuitously so. it almost felt stagnant. like it lingered too much in one emotional register without much momentum.

despite all these, i would still recommend this book. it promises something urgent: the permission to exist, to feel, to belong. and sometimes, that's more than enough.

how strange to feel something so close to mercy...that among a pile of salvaged trash, he could come closest to all he ever wanted to be: a consciousness sitting under a lightbulb reading his days away, warm and alone, alone and yet, still somebody's son.

— br with lovely girls anh and ash 💓

[iris ᵕ̈]

rip me, not dead but this might kill me

— br with the loml, eva

[Emma.catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The hardest thing in the world is to live only once. But it’s beautiful here, even the ghosts agree."

This was SUCH a hard book to rate and review. I can’t remember the last time I was so torn 🫤

It is undeniably a beautifully written book 🤌🏽 And furthermore, there were some incredibly tender and meaningful moments throughout this book. However, I didn't find myself engaged, nor enjoying the reading of it 😬

The Emperor of Gladness is a very vivid and poetic tale, that sweeps across time and place. But, however vast it may sweep, it is ladened detail and originality.

“You see, carrots become bright orange because it’s so dark in the ground. They make their own light because the sun never reaches that far—like those fish in the ocean who glow from nothing? So when you eat it, you take in the carrot’s will to go upward. To heaven.”

From the very beginning, Ocean Vuong presents us with two very memorable characters- 19 year old Hai and Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia. We meet them both on a summer’s evening, in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut. Hai standing on a bridge, in pelting rain, ready to jump into the river below, when he hears a voice from across the river. Thankfully, that voice belonged to Grazina, who convinced him to see a different path.

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" ❤️

Throughout the course of the next year, he becomes her caretaker. There are some incredibly powerful and tearjerking moments between these two alternative characters. This unlikely pair develop an undeniably strong bond, built on trust, empathy, family, and stories of the past.

“When did he die, your husband?” “When does anybody die?” she shrugged. “When God says Well done.” 😌🕊️🤲🏼

“Because to remember is to fill the present with the past, which meant that the cost of remembering anything, anything at all, is life itself. We murder ourselves, he thought, by remembering."

Ocean Vuong takes us back and forth in time, and memories, showing us what it means to be human, and the lengths we go to, to survive. It is both heartwarming and heartbreaking. BUT, while these profound messages are beautiful, the book wasn’t all that engaging. I didn’t find myself wanting to keep reading. I was intrigued and interested in the characters, but it wasn’t all that enjoyable to read. I’m sorry 😢 I really wanted to enjoy it, but it just didn’t do it for me.

All being said, I think it still deserves a decent rating given its power, originality and beauty. So, I am going for a reasonable 3.5 🌟🌟🌟✨

“They were a nightfall away from the end, he thought, and almost laughed at the absurdity of it. She must have sensed it, because she turned to him and smiled. “Labas, we did a lot, didn’t we? Didn’t we do so much?” 🥺💖✨