The Emperor of Gladness

A boy stands on a bridge, ready to jump, until an old woman calls out to him.

The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong begins in East Gladness, a forgotten little town where nineteen-year-old Hai has run out of options. Grazina, a widow who lives across the river, sees him standing there and calls out to him, and that one moment changes the course of his year. He moves in with her, becomes her support and mainstay, and starts working among people who have it just as tight as he does. What follows is an unusual friendship between two generations who have both lost something.

Vuong writes like the poet he is: precise, gentle and at times merciless, about war, grief, family and the small moments when the light comes back after all. For readers of Hanya Yanagihara and Douglas Stuart, and for everyone who devoured On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. English-language paperback, literary fiction to read slowly.