The New York Times bestselling debut novel from the prize-winning prodigy
Ocean Vuong is the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collections Night Sky with Exit Wounds and Time is a Mother, as well as the New York Times bestselling novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. A recipient of the 2019 MacArthur "Genius" Grant, he is also the winner of the Whiting Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize. His writings have been featured in Atlantic, Harper's Magazine, Nation, New Republic, New Yorker, and the New York Times. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he currently splits his time between Northampton, Massachusetts, and New York City.
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.
*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.
*Sunday Independent *Books of the Year**
Vuong is a prodigious talent, his handling of words and images both
brutal and delicate, his treatment of violence, sex and the body
radically clear-eyed.
*Financial Times*
Vuong as a writer is daring. He goes where the hurt is, creating a
novel saturated with yearning and ache… He transforms the
emotional, the visceral, the individual into the political in an
unforgettable – indeed, gorgeous – novel.
*Time Magazine*
Ocean Vuong’s fantastic new novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
reminded me that every word can be an incantation, and that beauty
does hard and important work.
*New Statesman*
A stunning, frankly unforgettable debut novel… It's not surprising
that novels by poets often include some of the loveliest prose, but
Vuong's is especially luminous… On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous is
so many things; a love story from a son to his mother; an
exploration of masculinity and race; and a series of limpid
thoughts about the world… Everything about this book makes me feel
glad to live in an era when the novel still matters, when the human
ability to bring together words and sentences can lead to such
scintillating, poignant language.
*Herald Scotland*
Vuong’s material is gripping even in precis… Vuong’s determination
to see well-trodden ground afresh, with unremitting complexity, is
extremely rare... In these authenticity-hungry times, Vuong could
have let his sensational biography simply “speak for itself”. There
is a great deal to admire: that he was able to give such personal
material novelistic treatment; that he had the patience to wait
until that was possible; that he only had wait until he was 30…
[an] exciting talent.
*Sunday Times*
![]() |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
![]() |