THE MILLION-COPY BESTSELLER AND TIKTOK SENSATION 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 a bridge 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. Over the course of the year the unlikely pair develops
a life-altering bond that has the power to alter Hai's relationship to himself his family and
a community at the brink. The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which our lives
are changed by the most unlikely of people. When Hai takes a job at a diner to support himself
and Grazina his fellow workers become the family he didn't expect to find. United by
desperation and circumstance and existing on the fringes of society together they bear
witness to each other's survival. This is an unforgettable story of unexpected friendship and
how far we would go to possess one of life's most fleeting mercies: a second chance. ''A
poetic dramatic and vivid story. It has an epic sweep but it also handles intimacy and love
with delicacy and deep originality'' COLM TÓIBÍN ''Tender and moving'' REBECCA SOLNIT ''A
masterwork'' BRYAN WASHINGTON
