Description

**LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2026**
**SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025**

A GUARDIAN, INDEPENDENT and NEW STATESMAN Book of the Year

‘Slick, sharp, strange and singular . . . You’ll gulp this novel down in one in-breath’ SAMANTHA HARVEY, Booker Prize-winning author of Orbital

‘A lightning bolt of a novel’ FINANCIAL TIMES

‘I’m not sure there’s anyone better writing in America today’ ALEX PRESTON, Observer

One woman, the performance of a lifetime. Or two. 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.

Taut and hypnotic, Audition is Katie Kitamura at her virtuosic best.

Publisher Review

Kitamura’s great talent is describing the minutiae of human connections, how in the course of seconds an interaction can provoke sympathy, then irritation, followed by confusion. She can turn a single exchange into a symphony of implications * The Times * Kitamura is unparalleled . . . Always engaging and thought-provoking . . . Audition is a lightning bolt of a novel * Financial Times * Katie Kitamura’s latest novel, Audition, is slick, sharp, strange and singular. I love her work; she’s a writer who can conjure intrigue from the scantest detail, and you’ll gulp this novel down in one in-breath — Samantha Harvey, Booker Prize-winning author of ORBITAL * Guardian, *Summer Reads of 2025* * Kitamura’s novels are short, sharp and deadly. I’m not sure there’s anyone better writing in America today — Alex Preston * Observer * A literary performance of true uncanniness: one that, in a very real sense, takes on life * Guardian * Audition has powerful things to say about our present destabilised society . . . This superb, thoughtful novel resonated long after finishing * Independent * A quiet novel about the ways we hide our true selves from others – and ourselves — Barack Obama Kitamura is always worth reading * Evening Standard * Kitamura is totally in control of her prodigious gifts. Her confluence of style and ruthless intelligence is so distinctive that it feels almost like its own genre. Whether she remains in the terrain she has established or not, we are lucky to read her * New Statesman * A daring, riddling novel . . . A literary hall of mirrors that explores the deepest questions about performance, identity and how we relate to each other * Guardian, *Summer Reads of 2025* *