Editions

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

** Sunday Times Bestseller **

Brilliant, heartbreaking and highly original, Ocean Vuong's debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, and a testament to the redemptive power of storytelling.

'A marvel' Marlon James

This is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born. It tells of Vietnam, of the lasting impact of war, and of his family's struggle to forge a new future. And it serves as a doorway into parts of Little Dog's life his mother has never known - episodes of bewilderment, fear and passion - all the while moving closer to an unforgettable revelation.

'A masterpiece' Max Porter

'Luminous, shattering, urgent, necessary' Celeste Ng

Reviews

  • Everything is beautiful in this debut… Vuong has originality running through his veins, and a good deal of humour and impish charm… This impressive debut hints at even greater things to come.

    The Times

  • A stunning, beautiful book... His writing is phenomenal... Simply brilliant.

    BBC Radio 4 Saturday Review

  • This is some of the most moving writing I’ve read… The tenderness of the prose feels like a triumph against a world hellbent on embittering the tenderhearted… the truths arrived at in this book are valuable precisely because they are steeped in feeling.

    New York Times

  • Vuong is surely a literary descendant of the author of Leaves of Grass. Emerging from the most marginalized circumstances, he has produced a lyrical work of self-discovery that’s shockingly intimate and insistently universal… Not so much briefly gorgeous as permanently stunning.

    Ron Charles, Washington Post

  • Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous confirms him as a master of inventive language that has its roots in the spoken word but reaches shimmering heights of lyricism, too.

    Joseph O'Connor, Sunday Independent *Books of the Year*

More from this Author

About the Author

Ocean Vuong

Ocean Vuong is the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds, winner of the Whiting Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize. His writings have also been featured in The Atlantic, Harper's, The Nation, New Republic, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. In 2019 he was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he currently lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he serves as an Assistant Professor of English at UMass-Amherst. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is his first novel.

Ocean Vuong

Read more

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Extracts

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

Poet Ocean Vuong's debut novel is a sweeping and shattering portrait of a family, and a testament to the redemptive power of storytelling. Read an extract from one of the most anticipated books of 2019 ahead of its publication in June.
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Ocean Vuong wins the TS Eliot prize

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