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On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous: A Novel Audiobook
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The instant New York Times Bestseller • Nominated for the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction “A lyrical work of self-discovery that’s shockingly intimate and insistently universal…Not so much briefly gorgeous as permanently stunning.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post Ocean Vuong’s debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and the redemptive power of storytelling On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous 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 — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one’s own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard. With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years. Named a Best Book of the Year by: GQ, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, Library Journal, TIME, Esquire, The Washington Post, Apple, Good Housekeeping, The New Yorker, The New York Public Library, Elle.com, The Guardian, The A.V. Club, NPR, Lithub, Entertainment Weekly, Vogue.com, The San Francisco Chronicle, Mother Jones, Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal Magazine and more!
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“An ingenious representation of our failure—as members of families and communities, as fellow citizens—to understand one another.”
— San Francisco Chronicle
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“A candid meditation on masculinity, art, and the inescapable pull of opioids.”
— Elle -
“[Vuong] is creating an account of lives that are at once overlooked and thoroughly American.”
— Wall Street Journal -
“The listener is carried along with Vuong’s voice, almost as if listening to a carefully crafted melody.”
— AudioFile
Awards
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New York Times bestseller
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Longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award for Ficton
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Shortlisted for the Foyles Book of the Year in Fiction
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Longlisted for the 2020 Aspen Words Literary Prize
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A Top Ten New York Public Library Best Book of the Year
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Longlisted for the 2020 PEN/Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award
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Finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction
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A BuzzFeed Books Pick of Immersive Audiobooks
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Shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award
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#1 Amazon bestseller
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Shortlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize
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Winner of the New New England Book Festival Award
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Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
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About 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, and the novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, a New York Times bestseller. His writings have also been featured in the Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, Nation, New Republic, New Yorker, and New York Times.