An extract from Audition by Katie Kitamura
‘Something uncoiled in my stomach, slow and languorous, and I decided it would be better if I left now, and did not go in to him’
An exhilarating, destabilising novel that asks whether we ever really know the people we love
Two people meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant. She’s an accomplished actress in rehearsals for an upcoming premiere. He’s attractive, troubling, young – young enough to be her son. Who is he to her, and who is she to him?
In this compulsively readable, brilliantly constructed novel, two competing narratives unspool, rewriting our understanding of the roles we play every day – partner, parent, creator, muse – and the truths every performance masks, especially from those who think they know us most intimately.
Audition was shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2025.
Katie Kitamura
About the Author
Katie Kitamura is an American novelist, journalist and art critic, born in Sacramento, CaliforniaAside from the extraordinarily honed quality of its sentences, the remarkable thing about Audition is the way it persists in the mind after reading, like a knot that feels tantalisingly close to coming free
— The Booker Prize 2025 judges
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What the judges said
‘This novel begins with an actress meeting a young man in a Manhattan restaurant. A surprising, unsettling conversation unfolds, but far more radical disturbances are to come. Aside from the extraordinarily honed quality of its sentences, the remarkable thing about Audition is the way it persists in the mind after reading, like a knot that feels tantalisingly close to coming free. Denying us the resolution we instinctively crave from stories, Kitamura takes Chekhov’s dictum – that the job of the writer is to ask questions, not answer them – and runs with it, presenting a puzzle, the solution to which is undoubtedly obscure, and might not even exist at all.’
What the critics said
Arin Keeble, Financial Times
‘In her depictions of how an unexpected turn of phrase, awkward silence, unbidden distraction or shift in body language can change the weather in a room, Kitamura is unparalleled.’
Joumana Khatib, New York Times
‘It’s her most thrilling examination yet of the deceit inherent in human connection… Few writers have nailed the interpersonal thriller better than Kitamura.’
Ellen Wiles, Times Literary Supplement
‘Kitamura’s prose is remarkable for its minimalist quality, characterized by brief, declaratory observations and acute psychological insights… While rich in ideas, Audition fails to match the drama of Kitamura’s previous novel, Intimacies (2021) … But Audition is more formally daring, and the writing is as distinctive as ever in its concision and intelligence.’
