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THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

‘Heartbreaking, heartwarming yet unsentimental, and savagely comic’ Guardian
‘Some of the most beautiful writing I’ve experienced in my lifetime’ Oprah Winfrey

READERS ARE OBSESSED WITH THE EMPEROR OF GLADNESS:
‘Read it slowly. Let it wreck you. Then read it again’
‘I feel like I lost part of my soul to this book’
‘I would give it 6 stars if I could’
‘Sad and funny, devastating and quietly celebratory’
‘A masterwork of compassion and complexity’

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

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.

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 people go to find a second chance.

‘The first millennial Great American Novel’ ArtReview
‘His most vivid, ambitious work yet’ Dazed
‘This stunning book moved me so much’ CAITRIONA BALFE
‘A poetic, dramatic and vivid story’ COLM TOIBIN

Publisher Review

[An] innovative, playful novel’ * Financial Times, *Books to Look Out For 2025* * Sad, haunting but ultimately hopeful this is a gut punch and an warm embrace rendered out of poetic, tender prose * AnOther, *Books to Look Out For 2025* * 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 *