The Emperor of Gladness

The Emperor of Gladness (2025) is a novel by Vietnamese American poet, essayist, and novelist Ocean Vuong. The story follows the relationship between a 19-year-old boy named Hai and 82-year-old Grazina, a woman with dementia for whom Hai serves as a carer.

Vuong is a widely celebrated writer whose debut novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (2019), won the American Book Award, the Mark Twain Award, and the New England Book Award. The novel was on The New York Times bestseller list for six weeks and has sold more than a million copies in 40 languages. Vuong is also a nominee for the National Book Award and a recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Grant, in addition to authoring multiple poetry collections: Time is a Mother, a finalist for the Griffin prize, and Night Sky with Exit Wounds (2016), a New York Times Top 10 Book and winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Whiting Award, and the Thom Gunn Award (“About.” Ocean Vuong).

This guide references the 2025 Penguin Random House, Kindle Edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of substance use, suicidal ideation, antigay bias, bullying, sexual content, mental illness, illness & death, animal cruelty & death, addiction, and racism.

Plot Summary

The story takes place over several months in late 2009 and early 2010. In September 2009, a 19-year-old boy named Hai prepares to jump off a bridge over the Connecticut River in a fictional town named East Gladness. An old woman named Grazina, who lives near the bridge, spots him and stops him from jumping. Originally from Lithuania, Grazina nicknames Hai “Labas,” which means “hello” in Lithuanian. She has dementia and invites Hai to live with her as her carer in exchange for room and board. Hai accepts.

Hai takes charge of administering Grazina her daily medication and helps her through episodes of dementia in which Grazina believes she is a young girl back in Europe during World War II, and Hai takes on the persona of a soldier named “Sergeant Pepper.” Together, they have mock fights and escape to different parts of Europe in an attempt to make it to America.

Shortly after moving in with Grazina, Hai takes on a job to help with expenses—he finds employment at a fast casual franchise in town called HomeMarket, where Hai’s neurodivergent cousin, Sony, also works. The franchise is managed by Big Jean, also known as BJ, a Black woman who dreams of getting into pro wrestling. The rest of the crew is made up of Russia, a young boy who is constantly smoking marijuana; Maureen, an older woman who manages the cashier; and Wayne, a Black man who handles the chicken station. Hai develops a strong camaraderie with the rest of the staff and quickly falls into a daily rhythm working at HomeMarket and caring for Grazina.

Across the narrative, Vuong reveals that Hai struggles with substance addiction and is somewhat estranged from his mother. He enrolled in college in New York after finishing school. However, after a close friend and lover died of an overdose when Hai was in college, he found himself unable to continue. He dropped out of college and returned home. Hai’s substance use, coupled with his outstanding scholarship debt and his failure to complete college, greatly enraged his mother, especially as Hai never told her the real reason he dropped out. Eventually, Hai lied to her, claiming that he had gotten into medical school in Boston and pretended to leave home for college again, but checked himself into a rehabilitation center instead. Once he got out, he found himself still unable to come clean to his mother and decided to jump off the bridge.

While working at HomeMarket, Hai learns that Aunt Kim (Sony’s mother and Hai’s mother’s sister) is in jail. Sony is trying desperately to save up enough money to bail her out. Wanting to help Sony, Hai initially steals some money that he finds hidden away in Grazina’s house to use for Aunt Kim’s bail, but he feels guilty about taking advantage of Grazina and can’t go through with it. Hai also finds Grazina’s late husband’s pain medication in different places in the house, all of which he stashes for his personal use.

On Christmas Eve, Grazina remembers that she’s supposed to visit her son, Lucas, whom Hai had not known was real due to Grazina’s tendency to slip into delusions. Grazina asks Hai to pretend to be her nurse, and they arrive at the luxurious condo where Lucas, his wife, and his two children live. Grazina’s grandchildren are rude to her, while her daughter-in-law is pretentious, and Lucas is dismissive. They reveal that they are planning to move her into a home so she can receive round-the-clock care, and they will organize the sale of her house by the river.  Grazina reluctantly agrees.

After Christmas, the HomeMarket crew is invited to watch BJ’s wrestling performance, which unfortunately ends in disaster, as BJ’s act is relentlessly booed by the crowd. Shortly after, Hai accompanies Sony to visit Aunt Kim in prison, where she reveals to Hai privately that Sony’s father died a few years ago, but she hid the news from Sony and has been writing him letters as his father.

Time passes, and Grazina’s condition worsens. Simultaneously, HomeMarket receives a visit from a regional manager, and Hai overhears him tell BJ that he needs to let one of their staff go. One day, Hai returns home to find Grazina missing and frantically calls a furious Lucas, who reveals that she had a fall and has been taken to the hospital. Hai visits her in the hospital and is dismayed to discover that she’s getting increasingly incoherent. An ambulance brings her home, and Lucas arrives intending to move Grazina into Hamilton Home right away. A distraught Grazina refuses to go and begs Hai for help. Together, they pretend that they are fending off enemy forces and drive Lucas and the nurse away by throwing salt and pepper shakers as grenades at them. Lucas leaves but promises to return.

The regional manager returns to HomeMarket and fires Sony, who runs away in shock. Hai calls Aunt Kim, and they realize Sony is going to Vermont to be with his father. Hai manages to find Sony and tells him the truth about his father, but Sony reveals that he already knows. He’s going to look for his father’s remains, as his father used to claim that he had a diamond in his hand that got embedded under his skin with the force of a bomb blast when he was fighting the Vietcong.

Hai decides to accompany Sony, but he needs to take Grazina along with him. When they tell the HomeMarket crew their plan, BJ commandeers a HomeMarket delivery van and drives the group, with Maureen tagging along as well. The group makes it to Brattleboro, where Sony’s father died in his car off the park trail. He had lit a cigarette, and the car went up in flames because of a gas leak. The group finds the charred headrest of the car, but nothing else; after consoling a heartbroken Sony, they eventually make their way home.

Upon returning home, Hai and Grazina discover an official notice on the door informing them that Grazina will be moved to Hamilton Home the next day. They spend the rest of the evening together watching television and head out for coffee at a diner in the middle of the night. Grazina is taken away the following afternoon, but she gives Hai the cash she had saved up. Hai gives Grazina’s money and whatever else he has in his account to Sony for Aunt Kim. Hai’s mother calls to talk to him. The book ends with Hai talking to his mother, the conversation interspersed with revelations about what happens to each of the characters down the road.