A GUARDIAN, OBSERVER, FINANCIAL TIMES, BBC, TIME, VOGUE, MARIE CLAIRE, ESQUIRE and ROLLING STONE BOOK TO READ IN 2025

'An original' RACHEL KUSHNER
'Gorgeously disquieting' HERNAN DIAZ
'One of our most brilliant writers' LAUREN GROFF

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.

"Acutely aware of the very real trauma that attends the loosening of personhood, Audition . . . thrills at the freedoms made possible through collapse. The result is a literary performance of true uncanniness: one that, in a very real sense, takes on life" - Guardian

"Kitamura's novels are short, sharp and deadly. I’m not sure there’s anyone better writing in America today" - Observer

"Kitamura is unparalleled . . . Always engaging and thought-provoking . . . Audition is a lightning bolt of a novel" - Financial Times

"Audition has powerful things to say about our present destabilised society . . . This superb, thoughtful novel resonated long after finishing" - Independent

"A blisteringly incisive, coolly devastating tour de force of controlled menance . . . Bold, stark, genre-bending, Audition will haunt your dreams" - Boston Globe

"Kitamura is always worth reading" - Evening Standard