
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
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
“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)
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Overall
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In the wake of a catastrophic storm, Cora sets off with her nine-year-old daughter, Maia, to register her son's birth. Her husband, Gordon, a local doctor, respected in the community but a terrifying and controlling presence at home, intends for her to name the infant after him. But when the registrar asks what she'd like to call the child, Cora hesitates...
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exciting and innovative family study
- By Sabine Hentrich on 05-31-25
By: Florence Knapp
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My Friends
- A Novel
- By: Fredrik Backman
- Narrated by: Marin Ireland
- Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an artist herself, knows otherwise and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures. Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their difficult home lives by spending their days laughing and telling stories out on a pier.
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How can he keep doing this? Another masterpiece!
- By Blue on 05-08-25
By: Fredrik Backman
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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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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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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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Speak to Me of Home
- A Novel
- By: Jeanine Cummins
- Narrated by: Almarie Guerra
- Length: 15 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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On her wedding day in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1968, Rafaela Acuña y Daubón has mild misgivings, but she marries Peter Brennan Jr. anyway in a blaze of romantic optimism. She has no way of knowing how dramatically her life will change when she uproots her young family to start over in the American Midwest, unleashing a fleet of disappointments. In the 1980s, against the backdrop of her mother’s isolation in St. Louis, Missouri, Rafaela’s daughter, Ruth, wants only to belong. Eager to fit in, Ruth lets go of her language, habits, and childhood memories of Puerto Rico. I
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Long Awaited Novel
- By Ruth Kelly on 05-30-25
By: Jeanine Cummins
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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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The Dark Maestro
- A Novel
- By: Brendan Slocumb
- Narrated by: Ronald Peet
- Length: 13 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Curtis Wilson is a cello prodigy, growing up in the Southeast D.C. projects with a drug dealer for a father. But through determination and talent, and the loving support of his father’s girlfriend, Larissa, Curtis claws his way out of his challenging circumstances and rises to unimagined heights in the classical music world—even soloing with the New York Philharmonic. And then, suddenly, his life disintegrates. His father, Zippy, turns state’s evidence, implicating his old bosses. Now the family—Curtis included—must enter the witness protection program if they want to survive.
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Overcoming
- By erroll on 05-28-25
By: Brendan Slocumb
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The Devil Three Times
- A Novel
- By: Rickey Fayne
- Narrated by: James Fouhey, Robin Miles, Joniece Abbott-Pratt
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Yetunde awakens aboard a slave ship en route to the United States with the spirit of her dead sister as her only companion. Desperate to survive the hell that awaits her at their destination, Yetunde finds help in an unexpected form—the Devil himself. The Devil, seeking a way to reenter the pearly gates of heaven, decides to prove himself to an indifferent God by protecting Yetunde and granting her a piece of his supernatural power. In return, Yetunde makes an incredible sacrifice.
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Very hard to follow
- By Amazon Customer on 05-24-25
By: Rickey Fayne
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The Boy from the Sea
- A Novel
- By: Garrett Carr
- Narrated by: Stanley Townsend
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Ireland 1973, a baby boy is found on the beach of a close-knit fishing village. Fisherman Ambrose Bonnar offers to bring the child into his own family: his son, Declan, wife, Christine, and up the lane, Christine's sister and aging father. The townspeople remain fascinated by the baby, now named Brendan, as he grows into a strange yet charismatic young man.
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A Rrespite
- By Penny Reeder on 05-31-25
By: Garrett Carr
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Sing to Me
- A Novel
- By: Jesse Browner
- Narrated by: Samara Naeymi
- Length: 5 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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His family farm and the surrounding community now emptied by war, young Hani embarks on an epic quest–assisted by a brooding yet brilliant donkey–to find his lost sister in the ruins of Troy. Some war stories transcend time and circumstance, and so it is with the resourceful and heartbroken Hani, who must employ every bit of intelligence, every scrap of ingenuity, and ultimately every ounce of his spirit and humor to withstand the forces of civilization’s collapse.
By: Jesse Browner
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The Missing Half
- A Novel
- By: Ashley Flowers, Alex Kiester - contributor
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld, Ashley Flowers
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Nic wants nothing more than to move on—from her sister’s disappearance and the state it’s left her in. But then one day, Jules’s sister, Jenna Connor, walks into her life and offers Nic something she hasn’t felt in a long time: hope. What follows is a gripping tale of two sisters who will do anything to find their missing halves, even if it means destroying everything they’ve ever known.
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Even better than her first book!
- By Erin on 05-07-25
By: Ashley Flowers, and others
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Fever Beach
- A Novel
- By: Carl Hiaasen
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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“The afternoon of September first, dishwater-gray and rainy, a man named Dale Figgo picked up a hitchhiker on Gus Grissom Boulevard in Tangelo Falls, Florida. The hitchhiker, who reminded Figgo of Danny DeVito, asked for a lift to the interstate. Figgo said he’d take him there after finishing an errand.” Thus begins Fever Beach, with an errand that leads—in pure Hiaasen-style—into the depths of Florida at its most Floridian: a sun-soaked bastion of right-wing extremism, white power, greed, and corruption.
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A disappointment
- By Jim Mcculloch on 05-14-25
By: Carl Hiaasen
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The Correspondent
- A Novel
- By: Virginia Evans
- Narrated by: Maggi-Meg Reed, Jane Oppenheimer, Carly Robins, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Sybil Van Antwerp has throughout her life used letters to make sense of the world and her place in it. Most mornings, around half past ten, Sybil sits down to write letters—to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to audit a class she desperately wants to take, to Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter.
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Phenomenal Story Plus Performances!
- By M. Ryder on 05-21-25
By: Virginia Evans
Narrative! It was brilliant.
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Beautiful complex story
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Very Touching
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Ocean Vuong has a surprising way of sharing observations. He can bring awareness to something true that you likely never considered before, and the words he chooses are both simple and piercing.
Truly beautiful and human.
Beautiful introspection about war within the mind
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A great story with relatable characters. Narrated to perfection!
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Simple connection of humans
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Story and oration
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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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