“Magnificent . . . Vuong is a lauded poet whose paragraphs are shot through with sentences that enthrall and often land with a philosopher’s wisdom and economy . . . In writing [The Emperor of Gladness], Vuong may have joined the ranks of an elite few great novelists, but his perspective remains rooted in that Connecticut town where he got his start.” —Leigh Haber, Los Angeles Times

“Heartbreaking, heartwarming yet unsentimental, and savagely comic all at the same time.” —The Guardian

“Vuong defies easy categorization. His books, whether they deploy line breaks or paragraphs, tend to root around among life's mundane intimacies for the profound truths of human connection. It's true here too in Vuong's second novel.” —NPR.org

“[The Emperor of Gladness] has a tremendous sense of humor. There are moments that made me laugh out loud in the midst of the beauty and the pain and the epic sweep of these individual lives.” —Ari Shapiro, All Things Considered

“Unremittingly gorgeous . . . Vuong again deftly walks a tightrope between despair and hope, heartache and love. For Vuong, fiction is a moral instrument, and he plays it with the practiced hand of a virtuoso . . . [He] vividly evokes the beauty of the depressed, post-industrial town in scene-setting descriptions that channel Thornton Wilder’s ‘Our Town.’ . . . We’re told that no one stops in East Gladness, but readers will be stopped in their tracks by Vuong’s imagery.” —Heller McAlpin, Christian Science Monitor

“Ocean Vuong crafts a story of intergenerational connection—of labor, love, memory, and care—while bridging the intimate and the epic, the lyric and the narrative . . . The Emperor of Gladness is a testament to the ways we find—and carve out—a sense of home in one another. As he has continually done in his work for the last decade, Vuong insists on the radical possibilities of tenderness and communion, and on our ability to remain in awe of this world even as our lives and the structures we rely on may be fracturing. The Emperor of Gladness offers readers a special gift: the practice of looking carefully at the world around us, and at the people who surround us, with more meaning and care.” —Poets & Writers

“Magisterial, precise and mythic in its resonance.”—Phoebe Farrell-Sherman, BookPage

“Ocean Vuong is uniquely talented at capturing the tender and wrought feelings of loss. His novels are live wires of emotion, crackling at each page with possibility. The Emperor of Gladness is no different.” —Chicago Review of Books

“Poet Vuong follows up his acclaimed first novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, with a searching and beautiful story of a troubled young man . . . Vuong’s scenes are vivid, and the pitch-perfect dialogue cuts like a knife . . . This downbeat tale soars to astonishing heights.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“[E]xploring themes of war and labor—their wretchedness, their dignity—Vuong's epic-feeling novel is a determined portrait of community, caretaking, and characters who, if they only have each other, have quite a lot.” —Booklist (starred review)

“[A]mbitious . . . The references to Slaughterhouse-Five and The Brothers Karamazov underscore Vuong’s interest in exploring war and morality, but this is remarkable as a novel that tries to look at those themes outside of conventional realism or combat porn . . . A sui generis take on the surprising and cruel ways violence is passed on across generations.” —Kirkus (starred review)

“The Emperor of Gladness is a poetic, dramatic and vivid story. Epic in its sweep, the novel also handles intimacy and love with delicacy and deep originality. Hai and Grazina are taken from the margins of American life by Ocean Vuong and, by dint of great sympathy and imaginative genius, placed at the very center of our world.” —Colm Tóibín, author of Long Island and Brooklyn

“Tender and moving, The Emperor of Gladness is about people on the margins of society and sanity. To my surprise and delight, Vuong’s novel is also wryly, subtly, wittily—and sometimes outrageously—a comedy as well as a tragedy.” —Rebecca Solnit, author of A Field Guide to Getting Lost and Recollections of My Nonexistence

“A masterwork.” —Bryan Washington, author of Palaver and Family Meal