PanWorld Literature TodayOcean Vuong deserves the highest respect as poet and memoirist, but his new novel suffers from a shocking aesthetic imbalance. Though The Emperor of Gladness attempts to crystallize charity and compassion in a world besot by violence, racism, cruelty, and indifference, it loses its way by embracing hypertrophic metaphors ... A pity because the novel has enough raw human material and plain reality to thrive on its own, without the extravagant artifice that Vuong often desperately applies.
