LitHouse podcast20 Okt 2025

Strategies for Survival: Ocean Vuong and Priya Bains

Poet and writer Ocean Vuong has in just a few years established himself as a leading literary voice of his generation. With his own life as a point of departure – born in Vietnam and grown up in a working-class family in the US – his raw and crystal-clear writing deals with war and trauma, immigration experiences, class, masculinity, sexuality and alienation.

In his latest novel, The Emperor of Gladness, we meet 19-year-old Vietnamese-American Hai, as he is about to end his own life, but he is saved by a chance meeting with an old and senile Lithuanian woman, Grazina, and an eclectic group of co-workers in a run-down fast food restaurant.

In Vuong’s America, the idea that the outsiders of society and the working-class poor can escape poverty through hard work is exposed as a lie. The closest they get to a break from their dead end days are drugs, pills or a breather in the restaurant’s freezer. But through the story of Grazina, Hai and his colleagues, he shows how unexpected friendships and care for those around us can be a respite in all the hopelessness.

Ocean Vuong is the winner of the American Book Award, the Mark Twain Award, the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Whiting Award, to name a few. He is known for the award-winning and critically acclaimed titles Night Sky With Exit Wounds, Time Is A Mother and On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. His poetry is also clearly visible in his novels, vibrating with lyricism and metaphors that say with you after reading.

At the House of Literature, Vuong was joined by the Norwegian poet and editor Priya Bains for a conversation about loss and grief, chosen families and writing about the working-class poor.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(139)

Dilemmas of Diplomacy. Geert Mak and Espen Barth Eide

In conversation with Tove Gravdal about Roosevelt’s right hand, history’s middlemen and the role of diplomacy today.From Epstein files to the US and Israel’s bombing of Iran: The events of the last fe...

10 Aug 59min

Andrey Kurkov: Ukraine — Memories for the future

The Wergeland Lecture 2026Andrey Kurkov is one of Ukraine’s most central cultural and literary ambassadors. With titles such as Death and the Penguin and Grey Bees, he has gained readers across the wo...

15 Maj 54min

Feminism in Ukrainian: Oksana Zabuzhko and Lotta Elstad

Oksana Zabuzhko is one of the central writers of Ukraine’s post-Soviet generation. In 1996, she caused great controversy with her debut novel, Field Work in Ukrainian Sex, in which she challenged the ...

4 Maj 1h 1min

The Tsar Dynasty and the Mad Monk: Anthony Beevor and Erika Fatland

Few historians can match the position of British Anthony Beevor. With his 13 historical book son recent European history, he has become one of the most respected and read writers of history. Especiall...

27 Apr 1h 6min

A Love Story: Siri Hustvedt and Marte Spurkland

After 43 years together, author Siri Hustvedt loses her husband, the author Paul Auster, to an aggressive form of cancer. Now there is only Siri left, in a time in which memories, smells and words fro...

13 Apr 1h 2min

A Country Falling Apart: Siri Hustvedt and Karin Haugen

No, reading novels is not a solution to our political miseries. For that organization, active resistance, and harder rhetoric is required. But we need stories.Author Siri Hustvedt said these words dur...

13 Apr 1h 6min

A Women's History. Annabelle Hirsch and Susanne Kaluza

In A History of Women in 101 Objects, author Annabelle Hirsch shows us how the things around us aren’t just objects, but testimonies to a common cultural history and set of values. Hirsch shows how so...

2 Mars 1h

A Secret Family History: Lea Ypi

Albanian Lea Ypi has a talent for combining the personal and the political in history, exploring how we are all shaped by the societies and ideologies surrounding us. In her memoir Free. A Child and a...

23 Feb 57min