Ocean Vuong’s poetry collections Night Sky with Exit Wounds and Time is a Mother both received critical acclaim, as did his novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. His works focus on mother–son bonds frayed by the trauma of the Vietnam War, immigration to the United States and the drudgeries of working-class life in the suburban backwaters of New England. These themes are drawn from Vuong’s own experiences: he was born in Vietnam to a half-American mother whose mixed-race heritage put her at risk. When Vuong was two, his family gained asylum in the USA and settled in Hartford, Connecticut. Vuong found inspiration for his novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous from his time working as a tobacco harvester. 

In this new novel, The Emperor of Gladness, Vuong draws on his time working as a fast-food server. It follows Hai, the son of a Vietnamese manicurist who used to dream of writing ‘a novel that held everything I loved, including unlovable things. Like a little cabinet.’ But that was back in high school, before the dreams gave way to life’s demands. 

We first meet Hai as he is preparing to jump off King Philip’s Bridge in his hometown of East Gladness, Connecticut. He is interrupted, however, by an elderly Lithuanian woman named Grazina, who tells him: ‘You can’t die in front of my house, okay? I don’t need any more