An extract from Audition by Katie Kitamura

Audition is shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2025. Read an extract here

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 is published in the UK by Fern Press. This extract is taken from the novel’s opening chapter.

Written by Katie Kitamura

Published August 4, 2025

It seemed an unlikely choice, this large establishment in the financial district, so that I stood outside and checked the address, the name of the restaurant, I wondered if I had made a mistake. But then I saw him through the window, seated at a table toward the back of the dining room. I stared through the layers of glass and reflection, the frame of my own face. 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.

At that moment, the front door opened and a man stepped out, he inclined his head and held the door open, and because of that small courtesy—an invitation or injunction to enter—I went inside. The foyer was busy with diners collecting their coats, people surging in and then out of the entryway, and briefly I allowed myself to be buffeted by their movement. When the crowd dispersed, I could see across the dining room floor again, he was bent over the menu, examining it in a nervous posture. His table was between the entrance to the kitchen and the bathrooms, caught in a stream of constant traffic. A pair of businessmen bumped against its edge and he sat back impatiently, I saw him take a deep breath, as if trying to collect or steady his thoughts.

The host asked if I had a reservation. I said that I was meeting someone and indicated the young man seated at the back of the restaurant. Xavier. It occurred to me that the host must have been the person to seat him at this inhospitable table, and I saw a flicker of surprise cross his features as I pointed. He looked quickly from my face to my coat to my jewelry. It was my age, above all. That was the thing that confounded him. He gave a tight smile and asked me to please follow him. I was under no obligation to obey, I could tell the host that I had made a mistake, or that something had come up, I could turn and slip away. But by that point it seemed too late, and much as I had entered at the behest of the man at the door, according to the imperative of mere courtesy, I followed the host through the warren of tables, each one occupied. I wondered again why Xavier had chosen such a crowded venue at such a busy time, when we might just as easily have met elsewhere, in the afternoon, in the morning or early evening, for a coffee or quiet drink. The din pressed against me, crowding the inside of my head so that it was hard to think, difficult to locate my thoughts amidst the noise.

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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

Xavier looked up as we approached. He set the menu down and rose to his feet, I remembered that he was unusually tall. I was momentarily intimidated, whether by him or by the situation I wasn’t sure. He smiled and said that he hadn’t been sure if I would come, he had been on the verge of giving up hope when at last he had seen me.

The host had already disappeared. We sat, one on either side of the table, me with my back to the wall. I looked across at Xavier and slowly unwound the scarf from my neck. He was still smiling, from the start I had noted his natural charm, his charisma. But I now saw that he dispensed it with too free a hand. He didn’t seem to understand the intensity of its effect, or the fact that he moved through a world inhabited by other people. In this sense especially, he was still very young.

I put the scarf down and apologized and told him that I was usually on time. He shook his head, manner too eager, he said that there was no need to apologize, it was only because he was anxious, it was only because he’d been afraid that I would change my mind that he’d had such thoughts, under ordinary circumstances a five-minute delay would pass unnoticed, he was himself often late.

There was an awkward pause and then we both spoke at once—I asked how his classes were and he apologized for how he had behaved the last time we met. I understand how I must have sounded, he said. You must have wondered if I had lost my mind, if you had reason to worry. His words drowned out my question, the shore of ordinary conversation rapidly receding. He had spoken over me—not out of any chauvinism, I didn’t think, but out of an excess of enthusiasm or nerves, he spoke like a person who did not have time to waste.

I looked at the menu and said that we should order, I wanted to eat and I wanted to have a drink, as soon as possible. He paused, then ducked his head down to examine the menu again. I asked if he already knew what he wanted and he said he wasn’t especially hungry. I have no appetite, is what he said. Still, when the waiter arrived he asked for a hamburger and French fries, the order of a child. Despite myself, I smiled. I ordered my food and then asked the waiter to bring me a vodka tonic, it was past noon and I saw no reason not to start drinking.

As soon as the waiter left I looked at Xavier and asked again how his classes were. I was determined to put things on a more neutral footing, but in doing so I seemed to antagonize him, I could see that he took this dispassion as an affront. He was silent and then said in a sullen voice that his classes were fine. Fine, he said and nothing further. I pressed on, I asked who his professors were, it was possible I knew some of them, but he shook his head and said that he was mostly taking technical classes this semester, and that I was unlikely to know his instructors.

Still, I persisted. I’m interested to know what you are learning, I said. What kind of work you want to make. Who you admire.

I admire Murata, he said after a sly pause. I love his work.

I nodded warily.

Of course, you knew him.

Very little. I worked with him only once, and briefly. He died not long after. And we did not speak the same language. I did my lines phonetically, we worked through interpreters. The interaction was somewhat circumscribed.

What was he like?

He was brilliant, I said slowly. I was aware that Xavier was watching me closely, with a hunger that sat too close to the surface. He was already very sick, I said. He tired easily and it was only through sheer force of will that he finished the production. None of us knew he had cancer.