Oprah’s newest ebook membership decide—it’s 114th choice—is Ocean Vuong’s The Emperor of Gladness. The award-winning poet-turned-novelist’s latest ebook simply got here out this week, and follows “the cycles of historical past, reminiscence and time.”

In it, 19-year-old Hai stands atop a bridge one summer season night, prepared to leap, when dementia-stricken aged widow Grazina talks him into happening one other path. So begins the pair’s journey collectively, which includes Hai changing into Grazina’s caretaker and him reckoning with himself and his place in his neighborhood. Zooming out, we see what it means to stay within the margins in America, and the way loneliness, love, and labor are foundational to this society.

“Ocean Vuong’s capability to […] take characters which have unusual lives and provides extraordinary which means to these lives makes us every consider our lives otherwise. He is a superb author, a poet and a grasp of phrases.” — Oprah