Ocean Vuong and RF Kuang debut new paperbacks for May
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- The Emperor of Gladness is Ocean Vuong’s second novel, a 416‑page paperback priced at £8.49 (RRP £9.99) at the Guardian bookshop.
- M John Harrison praised the novel as “heartbreaking, heartwarming yet unsentimental, and savagely comic”.
- Katabasis is RF Kuang’s new novel that follows Cambridge postgrads Alice Law and Peter Murdoch on a quest into the underworld to retrieve their dead supervisor, Professor Jacob Grimes.
- RF Kuang uses the novel to critique academic culture, showing how scholars internalise extractive logic and self‑delusion.
- The Guardian includes these titles in its “best books to read in May” list, recommending them as notable new paperbacks.
Why it matters: Budget‑conscious readers gain two fresh literary paperbacks under £10, while the Guardian bookshop and the authors’ publishers stand to see a sales lift from the May recommendation push.
