The Emperor of Gladness

Ocean Vuong

$45

Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

Jonathan Cape Ltd
15 June 2025

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

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 MILLION-COPY BESTSELLER AND TIKTOK SENSATION

Ocean Vuong returns with a big-hearted 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.

By: Ocean Vuong
Imprint: Jonathan Cape Ltd
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 240mm, Width: 156mm, Spine: 40mm
Weight: 750g
ISBN: 9781787335400
ISBN 10: 1787335402
Pages: 416
Publication Date: 15 June 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Ocean Vuong is the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds and 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 Atlantic, Harper's Magazine, Nation, New Republic, New Yorker, and the New York Times. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he currently lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Reviews for The Emperor of Gladness

Praise for Ocean Vuong * On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous * This is some of the most moving writing I’ve read… The tenderness of the prose feels like a triumph against a world hellbent on embittering the tenderhearted… the truths arrived at in this book are valuable precisely because they are steeped in feeling * New York Times * Vuong’s determination to see well-trodden ground afresh, with unremitting complexity, is extremely rare... An exciting talent * Sunday Times * Vuong is a prodigious talent, his handling of words and images both brutal and delicate, his treatment of violence, sex and the body radically clear-eyed * Financial Times * A stunning, beautiful book... His writing is phenomenal... Simply brilliant * BBC Radio 4 Saturday Review * A deeply moving book – I welled up roughly every 40 pages… one of the great strengths of this book is the way it elevates the personal into the political. Little Dog’s story is the story of modern America * Daily Telegraph * Vuong mines his extraordinary family story with passion and beauty… Vuong writes wonderfully -- Tessa Hadley * Guardian * Utterly captivating writing -- Anthony Cummins * Daily Mail * A masterpiece: a staggeringly beautiful book.. the Great American Novel. A huge gift to the world -- Max Porter Reminded me that every word can be an incantation, and that beauty does hard and important work -- Rebecca Solnit