Bookseller Reviews
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Addicting
There's just something about the way Katie Kitamura writes that completely grips you, it's addicting. This is my first book by her and it was incredible. T... READ MORE
A box of tricks
Audition is a slippery, enigmatic novel ostensibly about an actress who’s approached by a young man who claims to be her son - although to describe it like... READ MORE
BOOKERshort listed 2025
an actress and a young man meet at a restaurant, there is an instant connection between them but she doesn't understand why,he says that he is her estrange... READ MORE
Transportative psychological read
After a famous actress meets a young man claiming to her long lost son, the two become inseparable. As their relationship grows both in the theatre and in ... READ MORE
Synopsis
Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2025
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 information
- Publisher: Vintage Publishing
- ISBN: 9781911717324
- Number of pages: 208
- Dimensions: 224 x 145 x 22 mm
- Weight: 322g
- Languages: English
Customer Reviews
View allThis is another stunner from Katie Kitamura.
In Katie Kitamura's 'Audition' she explores the notion of identity and the roles we play in our lives. An actress struggles to find the right beats in a pl... READ MORE
Only way to describe this novel is - DELICIOUS!!
Goodness, this was my first Kitamura, and all I know for certain is that I must do a deep dive into her backlist. I absolutely ADORED this novel—utterly co... READ MORE
A brilliant deconstruction of fiction and family-role performance
Katie Kitamura’s previous (and fourth) novel “Intimacies” featured an interpreter in the International Criminal Court at the Hague, and I understand her th... READ MORE
Well written but hard to connect with
Katie Kitamura is a underrated author. I adored her Intimacies for the sparse but precise prose and the way it captured half-tones of reserved human emotio... READ MORE
A brilliant and unsettling novel - a puzzle to be pondered but not solved
"There are always two stories taking place at once, the narrative inside the play and the narrative around it, and the boundary between the two is more por... READ MORE
Thought provoking
This novel starts in a restaurant where the unnamed protagonist meets a much younger man, as they are eating her husband enters several times.
This will ... READ MORE
A riveting, hallucinogenic read that starts in one place and goes somewhere unexpected and extraordinary. One to read and put back onto the pile to read again.
This is a dizzying, disturbing piece of writing that is theoretically informed but which also is self-referential enough to be able to stand alone. It deli... READ MORE
A break in the novel form
I have to admit it: this book broke me. And not in a good way.
A well-known actress sits in a chichi restaurant with a young man. We are led to believe... READ MORE
Four stars!
Audition is a captivating, thought-provoking book that explores the complex roles we play in our relationships, both with others and ourselves. Set in a Ma... READ MORE
Booker Longlisted 2025
This book hadn't been on my radar until it was Booker longlisted (2025).
The writing is superb, I absolutely devoured it.
At no point did I want to put t... READ MORE
A book in two halves
Audition is definitely a marmite novel you will either love or hate. Luckily I loved it.
It was a novel of two halves, a well established actress walks in... READ MORE
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