The Emperor of Gladness

College dropout Hai doesn’t know how to face the future until a chance meeting with elderly widow Grazina changes his life, in this achingly beautiful novel about chosen family and second chances

One summer evening in the town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on a bridge, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond.

The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which our lives are changed by the most unexpected of people. When Hai takes a job at a diner to support himself and Grazina, his fellow workers become the family he didn’t expect to find. United by desperation and circumstance, and existing on the fringes of society, together they bear witness to each other’s survival.

This is an unforgettable story of unexpected friendship and how far we would go to possess one of life’s most fleeting mercies: a second chance.

A Most Anticipated Book in Guardian, Financial Times, Sunday Times Style, BBC, GQ, New York Times and AnOther

‘Depicts the emotions of its protagonists with a sensitivity and lusciousness… contains moments of almost unbearable poignancy’ Guardian

‘A poetic, dramatic and vivid story. It has an epic sweep but it also handles intimacy and love with delicacy and deep originality’ COLM TÓIBÍN

‘Tender and moving’ REBECCA SOLNIT

‘A masterwork’ BRYAN WASHINGTON