Interview: Ocean Vuong, Author, The Emperor of Gladness 'War is the most steadfast reality of our species'

On the middle-class illusions of literary fiction, and the raw truth: that safety, stability and abiding relationships remain the exception, not the norm

- Rutvik Bhandari

Did the title The Emperor of Gladness lead the story, or did it occur to you while you were writing the characters? It haunted the story. It comes from Hamlet. "Your worm is your only emperor... We fat all creatures else to fat us and we fat ourselves for maggots." No one gets to heaven without going through the maggot. For me, that was a big treatise about how I think about work and life.

There is also (the poet) Wallace Stevens: "The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream." That poem is about a funeral. I love these paradoxes. The title too feels triumphant. But as you read, you realise the book is trying to redefine what an emperor is. An emperor hog is named after who will eat it. It doesn't rule anything. Gladness is a town that doesn't exist. So, to be The Emperor of Gladness is to be the emperor of nothing.