The Emperor of Gladness

By: Ocean Vuong

Narrated by: James Aaron Oh

Brought to you by Penguin.

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

College dropout Hai doesn’t know how to face the future until a chance meeting with elderly widow Grazina changes his life.

One late summer evening in the town of East Gladness, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow.

From this moment, his second chance begins. Over the course of the year, Hai’s story takes new and unexpected turns, as his life-altering bond with Grazina transforms his relationship to the community, his family and, most powerfully of all, to himself.

‘Heartbreaking’ Guardian

‘Dramatic and vivid’ Colm Tóibín

‘Beautiful’ Oprah Winfrey

‘His most vivid, ambitious work yet’ Dazed

(C) Ocean Vuong 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

Critic reviews

A fine-grained social panorama driven by the developing camaraderie of an ensemble cast bonded in precariousness and pain

Depicts the emotions of its protagonists with a sensitivity and lusciousness… contains moments of almost unbearable poignancy

Firmly grounded and perfectly tuned… With its poetic morsels, ambivalent love for the rural northeast, and many-layered immigrant stories, The Emperor of Gladness may well be the first millennial Great American Novel

Heartbreaking, heartwarming yet unsentimental, and savagely comic all at the same time, The Emperor of Gladness is about just how wobbly things can become

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)

His most vivid, ambitious work yet

Remarkable... A sui generis take on the surprising and cruel ways violence is passed on across generations

[A] heartbreaking epic… Witten in Vuong’s inimitable prose…[it] will doubtless be counted among the great American novels

A masterwork (Bryan Washington)

This stunning book moved me so much, I fell in love with its characters and grieved their absence in my life when I turned the last page (Caitríona Balfe)

A piece of life

The writing was intelligent, the story gritty, the narrator pulled you along a path with characters that face life’s challenges. I’m glad to of met them.
Sometimes we need to read a story like this to remind us what everyday life is for others, it can be hard, very hard.