Ocean Vuong: The Emperor of Gladness

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 alter Hai’s relationship to himself, his family and a community at the brink.

Following the cycles of history, memory and time, The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which love, labour 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.

Mendez is a British novelist and critic. Their debut novel Rainbow Milk was selected as an Observer Top Ten Best Debuts choice and optioned for TV. Their work connects themes of subjectivity, spirituality, sexuality and grief, and the extraordinary in the everyday. They write regularly for the London Review of Books and WritersMosaic, and are currently working on their second novel.