The Emperor of Gladness: Oprah's Book Club

• ✔ Print length: 409 pages
• ✔ Language: English
• ✔ Publisher: Penguin Press
• ✔ Publication date: May 13, 2025

The Emperor of Gladness: Oprah's Book Club

On a damp late-summer night in the fading industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands at the brink of a bridge, rain crashing around him, prepared to end his life — until a voice calls out from across the water. It’s Grazina, an aging widow slipping into dementia, who urges him to choose a different fate. With nowhere else to turn, Hai becomes her unexpected companion and caregiver. Over the next twelve months, their unlikely connection evolves into a deeply transformative bond—shaped by compassion, spiritual searching, and shared sorrow—that reshapes Hai’s understanding of himself, his family, and a fragile town on the edge of collapse.

Tracing the movements of memory, time, and historical repetition, The Emperor of Gladness illuminates how love, grief, and unrecognized labor form the backbone of life in America. At its core, the novel is a courageous meditation on what it means to live at the margins, confronting the scars that echo through a society in pain. Ocean Vuong’s signature elements—formal daring, lyrical precision, and a delicate fusion of hardship and tenderness—shine through in this profound narrative of longing, resilience, and the quiet miracle of being granted a second chance.

A story steeped in emotional intensity, The Emperor of Gladness captures how unexpected human connection can reframe a life—and how, even in despair, grace can emerge from the unlikeliest of places.