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Audition by Katie Kitamura

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Audition

Publisher
Random House
Publish Date
17 April 2025
Run Time
4 hours 46 minutes
Format
Audiobook

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

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

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.

© Katie Kitamura 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

Critics 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

    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

    Observer

See more reviews
  • 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*

User Reviews

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Details

Author
Katie Kitamura
Narrator
Traci Kato-Kiriyama
Duration
4 hours 46 minutes
Release Date
17 April 2025
ISBN
9781529958676
Format
Audiobook
Publisher
Random House
Genre
Modern and contemporary fiction: literary and general, Psychological thriller, Narrative theme: love / relationships, Narrative theme: interior life / psychological fiction

Synopsis

Brought to you by Penguin.**SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025****LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2026**One woman, the performance of a lifetime. Or two. An exhilarating, destabilising novel that asks whether we ever really know the people we loveTwo 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.© Katie Kitamura 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

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