Burnings (2010) • No (2013) • Night Sky with Exit Wounds (2016) • On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (2019) • king philip (2020) • Time Is a Mother (2022) • The Emperor of Gladness (2024) •
Ocean Vuong (born 1988 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam) is a Vietnamese American poet, essayist, and novelist whose work explores themes of identity, diaspora, queerness, family, love, and the aftermath of war. He immigrated to the United States as a child and grew up in Hartford, Connecticut. Vuong’s debut poetry collection, Night Sky with Exit Wounds (2016), won the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Whiting Award, and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, earning international acclaim for its lyrical intensity and emotional depth. In 2019, he published his debut novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, a critically acclaimed, epistolary work blending fiction and autobiography, which became a New York Times bestseller and was translated into over thirty languages. His second poetry collection, Time Is a Mother (2022), reflects on grief, memory, and renewal following the death of his mother. Vuong is also a recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Grant and teaches at the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s MFA Program for Poets and Writers.
Due to the pandemic Ocean handed his manuscript King Philip to the Future Library in 2022 in a joint ceremony. This work was preceded by On Earth We’re Breifly Gorgeous in 2019 and followed by Time Is a Mother (2022).
Ute av verden (1998) • En tid for alt (2004) • Min kamp 1 (2009) • Min kamp 2 (2009) • Min kamp 3 (2009) • Min kamp 4 (2010) • Min kamp 5 (2010) • Min kamp 6 (2011) • Om høsten (2015) • Om vinteren (2015) • Om våren (2016) • Om sommeren (2016) • Så mye lengsel på så liten flate (2017) • Fuglene under himmelen (2019) • Blindeboka (2019) • Morgenstjernen (2020) • Ulvene fra evighetens skog (2021) • Det tredje riket (2022) • Nattskolen (2023) •
Title: The Emperor of Gladness
Author: Ocean Vuong
First Published: 2025, Penguin Press
Present Library Copy: Penguin Press, 2025
Language: English
Genre: Literary Fiction
Place of Writing: Connecticut River Vallery Region, USA
Pages: 416
ISBN: 978-0-593-83187-8
Notes | The Emperor of Gladness marks a powerful evolution in Ocean Vuong’s body of work, while remaining deeply rooted in the poetic voice and themes that define his writing.Stylistically, it continues his blend of poetry and prose, but with new formal experimentation: fragmented scenes, temporal shifts, and careful silence between words. It’s more communal, less autobiographical, yet still intensely intimate.
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 transform Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community on 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 Ocean 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.
“Stunning... A heartfelt and powerful examination of those living on the fringes of society, and the unique challenges they face to survive and thirve”
Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey