
The Emperor of Gladness
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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James Aaron Oh
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By:
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Ocean Vuong
About this listen
The instant New York Times bestseller • Oprah’s Book Club Pick • Ocean Vuong returns with a bighearted novel about chosen family, unexpected friendship, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive
“Stunning . . . A heartfelt and powerful examination of those living on the fringes of society, and the unique challenges they face to survive and thrive.”—Oprah Winfrey
“Magnificent . . . In writing this book, Vuong may have joined the ranks of an elite few great novelists.”—Leigh Haber, Los Angeles Times
The hardest thing in the world is to live only once…
One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to transform Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community on the brink.
Following the cycles of history, memory, and time, The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which love, labor, and loneliness form the bedrock of American life. At its heart is a brave epic about what it means to exist on the fringes of society and to reckon with the wounds that haunt our collective soul. Hallmarks of Ocean Vuong’s writing—formal innovation, syntactic dexterity, and the ability to twin grit with grace through tenderness—are on full display in this story of loss, hope, and how far we would go to possess one of life’s most fleeting mercies: a second chance.
©2025 Ocean Vuong (P)2025 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“Vuong’s protagonist, Hai, is a drug-addicted college dropout living in the fictional town of East Gladness, Connecticut. After he forms an unlikely bond with an elderly widow from Lithuania, whose house he moves into, he begins working at a fast-food restaurant, HomeMarket, where all of the employees are, like him, searching for some kind of home. The novel brims with feeling for these figures, who, though scorned by society, belong to it nonetheless.”—The New Yorker
“On the surface, The Emperor of Gladness is about people on the margins and how they survive hardship, but it’s also a story of how contradictions often exist in conjunction. War and loss run through the pages of The Emperor of Gladness, but so do love and joy. Estrangement ripples through the novel too, yet The Emperor of Gladness celebrates profound connections . . . Soulful and at times heart-wrenching.”—The Seattle Times
“In [The Emperor of Gladness] Ocean Vuong blends grief, healing, and resilience into a powerful and poetic narrative.”—PBS NewsHour
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- A Love Story
- By: Taylor Jenkins Reid
- Narrated by: Kristen DiMercurio, Julia Whelan, Taylor Jenkins Reid
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Fast-paced, thrilling, and emotional, Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her best: transporting listeners to iconic times and places, creating complex protagonists, and telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love—this time among the stars.
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This has soared to the top of my all-time favs!
- By Kimberley on 06-03-25
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The Original Daughter
- A Novel
- By: Jemimah Wei
- Narrated by: Eunice Wong
- Length: 13 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Before Arin, Genevieve Yang was an only child. Living with her parents and grandmother in a single-room flat inworking-class Singapore, Genevieve is saddled with an unexpected sibling when Arin appears, the shameful legacy of a grandfather long believed to be dead. As the girls grow closer, they must navigate the intensity of life in a brutally competitive place where the insistence on achievement demands constant sacrifice.
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not worth it
- By joy P on 06-04-25
By: Jemimah Wei
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King of Ashes
- A Novel
- By: S. A. Cosby
- Narrated by: Adam Lazarre-White
- Length: 13 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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When eldest son Roman Carruthers is summoned home after his father’s car accident, he finds his younger brother, Dante, in debt to dangerous criminals and his sister, Neveah, exhausted from holding the family—and the family business—together. Neveah and their father, who run the Carruthers Crematorium in the run-down central Virginia town of Jefferson Run, see death up close every day. But mortality draws even closer when it becomes clear that the crash that landed their father in a coma was no accident and Dante’s recklessness has placed them all in real danger.
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There are no words
- By Nikki on 06-11-25
By: S. A. Cosby
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My Name Is Emilia del Valle
- A Novel
- By: Isabel Allende, Frances Riddle
- Narrated by: Coral Peña, Johnathan McClain
- Length: 10 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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In San Francisco in 1866, an Irish nun, abandoned following a torrid relationship with a Chilean aristocrat, gives birth to a daughter named Emilia del Valle. Raised by a loving stepfather, Emilia grows into an independent thinker and a self-sufficient young woman. To pursue her passion for writing, she is willing to defy societal norms. At the age of seventeen, she begins to publish pulp fiction using a man’s pen name. When these fictional worlds can no longer satisfy her sense of adventure, she turns to journalism, convincing an editor at The Daily Examiner to hire her.
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Very disappointing
- By Monica Vachher on 05-10-25
By: Isabel Allende, and others
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Sleep
- A Novel
- By: Honor Jones
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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From a dazzling new talent, the story of a newly divorced young mother forced to reckon with the secrets of her own childhood when she brings her daughters back to the big house where she was raised.
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Best “literary fiction” book in years
- By Lydia Paddon on 05-30-25
By: Honor Jones
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Flashlight
- A Novel
- By: Susan Choi
- Narrated by: Eunice Wong
- Length: 17 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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One night, Louisa and her father take a walk on the beach. He’s carrying a flashlight. He cannot swim. Later Louisa is found washed up by the tide, barely alive. Her father is gone. She is ten years old. In chapters that shift from one member to the next, turning back again and again to that night by the sea, Susan Choi's Flashlight chases the shockwaves of one family’s catastrophe. Louisa is an only child of parents who have severed themselves from the past.
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I want my 15 hours back
- By Amazon customer on 06-11-25
By: Susan Choi
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The Girls Who Grew Big
- A Novel
- By: Leila Mottley
- Narrated by: AhDream Smith, Erin Spencer, Khaya Fraites
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Adela Woods is sixteen years old and pregnant. Her parents banish her from her comfortable upbringing in Indiana to her grandmother’s home in the small town of Padua Beach, Florida. When she arrives, Adela meets Emory, who brings her newborn to high school, determined to graduate despite the odds; Simone, mother of four-year-old twins, who weighs her options when she finds herself pregnant again; and the rest of the Girls, a group of outcast young moms who raise their growing brood in the back of Simone’s red truck.
By: Leila Mottley
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The River Is Waiting
- By: Wally Lamb
- Narrated by: Jeremy Sisto
- Length: 14 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Corby Ledbetter is struggling. New fatherhood, the loss of his job, and a growing secret addiction have thrown his marriage to his beloved Emily into a tailspin. And that’s before he causes the tragedy that tears the family apart. Sentenced to prison, Corby struggles to survive life on the inside, where he bears witness to frightful acts of brutality but also experiences small acts of kindness and elemental kinship with a prison librarian who sees his light and some of his fellow offenders, including a tender-hearted cellmate and a troubled teen desperate for a role model.
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Another Heartbreaker by Wally Lamb
- By Elizabeth on 06-16-25
By: Wally Lamb
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Run for the Hills
- A Novel
- By: Kevin Wilson
- Narrated by: Marin Ireland
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Ever since her dad left them twenty years ago, it’s just been Madeline Hill and her mom on their farm in Coalfield, Tennessee. While she sometimes admits it’s a bit lonely and a less exciting life than she imagined for herself, it’s mostly OK. Mostly. Then one day Reuben Hill pulls up in a PT Cruiser and informs Madeline that he believes she’s his half sister.
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Stunning!
- By Jennifer on 05-17-25
By: Kevin Wilson
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What Will People Think?
- A Novel
- By: Sara Hamdan
- Narrated by: Reem Edan
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Equal parts funny and tender, What Will People Think? is a heart-bursting exploration of what it means to discover and embrace the hidden parts of yourself, and how love in all forms can make you whole.
By: Sara Hamdan
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Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
- By: V. E. Schwab
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan, Katie Leung, Marisa Calin
- Length: 18 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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1532. Santo Domingo de la Calzada. A young girl grows up wild and wily—her beauty is only outmatched by her dreams of escape. But María knows she can only ever be a prize, or a pawn, in the games played by men. When an alluring stranger offers an alternate path, María makes a desperate choice. She vows to have no regrets.
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Character development & how humans, dead or undead, are by nature self-serving.
- By cheryl l lyon on 06-21-25
By: V. E. Schwab
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A Family Matter
- A Novel
- By: Claire Lynch
- Narrated by: Miranda Raison
- Length: 4 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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1982. Dawn is a young mother, still adjusting to life with her husband, when Hazel lights up her world like a torch in the dark. Theirs is the kind of connection that’s impossible to resist, and suddenly life is more complicated, and more joyful, than Dawn ever expected. But she has responsibilities and commitments. She has a daughter. 2022. Heron has just received news from his doctor that turns everything upside down. He’s an older man, stuck in the habits of a quiet existence. Telling Maggie, his only child—the person around whom his life has revolved—seems impossible.
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Powerful and emotional listen.
- By Sanmarpoopsie on 06-21-25
By: Claire Lynch
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Great Big Beautiful Life
- By: Emily Henry
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Alice Scott is an eternal optimist still dreaming of her big writing break. Hayden Anderson is a Pulitzer-prize winning human thundercloud. And they’re both on balmy Little Crescent Island for the same reason: To write the biography of a woman no one has seen in years—or at least to meet with the octogenarian who claims to be the Margaret Ives. Tragic heiress, former tabloid princess, and daughter of one of the most storied (and scandalous) families of the 20th Century.
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Just, wow.
- By julia lee on 04-25-25
By: Emily Henry
Beautiful complex story
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Very Touching
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Beautifully Heartbreaking
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Compelling characters, hopeful and sad
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I love this book.
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Best book I’ve read in awhile
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Character Driven Narrative
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Lasting impression
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The story of humanity and kindness
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Witty
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