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Audition

A sharp, incisive literary summer read

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Audition

Written by: Katie Kitamura
Narrated by: Traci Kato-Kiriyama
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Buy Now for ₹546.23

Buy Now for ₹546.23

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

 Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Psychological Suspense Thriller & Suspense Women's Fiction
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Critic Reviews

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
Kitamura is unparalleled . . . Always engaging and thought-provoking . . . Audition is a lightning bolt of a novel
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)
Kitamura's novels are short, sharp and deadly. I’m not sure there’s anyone better writing in America today (Alex Preston)
A literary performance of true uncanniness: one that, in a very real sense, takes on life
Audition has powerful things to say about our present destabilised society . . . This superb, thoughtful novel resonated long after finishing
A quiet novel about the ways we hide our true selves from others – and ourselves (Barack Obama)
Kitamura is always worth reading
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
A daring, riddling novel . . . A literary hall of mirrors that explores the deepest questions about performance, identity and how we relate to each other
All stars
Most relevant
Could not connect with any of the characters , the plot is overtly explored in many other better books

One time read only

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Good story. unreliable narrator of story. Audible narration was good except the multiple Tomaas rendition, which just becomes quite irritating because of the sheer number of times the character's name is pronounced.

Everything pretty good except the pronunciation of "Tomaaas'

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Its a story of unnamed narrator, her husband & her son.. well this part is complicated.
Its like two act play. In first act, the narrator don't have a child, in second act she does, a son, Xavier.
The book revolves around these three prime characters.
Katie Kitamura penned her emotions fantastically throughout!
End is interesting.
The story is not straightforward, its about your perspective. You need to interpret according to your impulse.
Good listen though.
Thank you Audible!

Complicated story narrated wonderfully!

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After finishing the entire book am still lost as to what the story was all about. Don't want to give away any plot points here.. but the author doesn't provide very many explanations as to why things are the way they are.. avoidable!

Quite underwhelming

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