The Emperor of Gladness drum his artworks evoke the rivers

his artworks evoke the rivers

After burning up the blacktop in New Mexico with The Fast Red Road and rewriting Indian history on the Great Plains with The Bird is Gone

Indiana Jones

which novelist Omar El Akkad called a "searing spear of light

with no way to understand what was happening to them

The Emperor of Gladness drum his artworks evoke the riversOcean Vuong returns with a bighearted novel about chosen family, unexpected friendship, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive. 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