Condition: BRAND NEW
ISBN: 9781787335417
Format: Trade paperback (UK)
Year: 2025
Publisher: RANDOM HOUSE UK


Description:
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 INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER



Ocean Vuong returns with an achingly beautiful novel about chosen family, unexpected friendship, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive




One summer evening in the 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. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond.



The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which our lives are changed by the most unexpected 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.



'Some of the most beautiful writing I've experienced in my lifetime' OPRAH WINFREY



'Perfectly tuned... May well be the first millennial Great American Novel' ArtReview




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




'His most vivid, ambitious work yet' Dazed




'A poetic, dramatic and vivid story. It has an epic sweep but it also handles intimacy and love with delicacy and deep originality' COLM T IB N<