Audition

Katie Kitamura writes with a spare, almost clinical efficiency, but that doesn’t limit the depth of her characters or the complexity of the dynamics she depicts . . . The strange pendulum swing from one scenario to the other catches you off guard – and isn’t that the mark of truly exciting fiction?

Vogue

Katie Kitamura is a revelatory interpreter of the human heart, in all its brilliance and obscurity

Alexandra Kleeman

You have never read anything like this gorgeously disquieting book. Audition challenges our preconceptions about love, art and selfhood – and, magnificently, our very idea of how a novel should unfold. If all the world’s a stage, Kitamura reminds us that we never stop auditioning for our parts

 Hernan Diaz

Katie Kitamura is a dizzyingly skilled writer, whose fictions always seem to manage two contradictory effects: a supple seductive surface, under which the chaos of minds and repressed realities roil. She’s an original, building an entire metier of her own

Rachel Kushner

Katie Kitamura is one of our most brilliant writers, saying far more in her silences, blank spaces and disruptions than most novelists can say in a hundred thousand words

Lauren Groff

Sublime writing from one word to the next, from the first word to the last

Roxane Gay

Beguilingly wonderful in its scrutiny of artistic process, ritual and selfhood

Sara Baume

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

Alex Preston, Observer

Katie Kitamura is among the most brilliant and profound writers at work today

Garth Greenwell

Kitamura is always worth reading

Evening Standard

Kitamura . . . has quietly built a reputation as one of America's best contemporary writers

BBC

You won't really know what Audition is about until you read it (and even then, you may have trouble deciding what and who to believe) . . . A sharp exploration of the performances we put on every day

Marie Claire

Katie Kitamura only writes intense and fascinating novels

Esquire

Kitamura is a formidable writer. With every chapter of Audition, she pushes at the walls of the novel, remaking it, expanding it, patiently and with gathering force. The result is extraordinary – an elegant, vertiginous work that is completely its own thing

Chetna Maroo

Written in Kitamura's unshakeably elegant prose, Audition is an emotional, intelligent, intensely stylish novel that reads like walking on quicksand: shocking, eerie, disorienting and utterly immersive. A mesmeric experience. It floored me

Jenny Mustard

Spare, restrained, taut, disquieting

Washington Post

An elegant knife of a story . . . In this searing, chilly and psychologically profound story lies insight into some harrowing human questions

Kirkus, starred review

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

Boston Globe

Katie Kitamura’s distinctive new novel, Audition, forms a loose trilogy with her two previous books, A Separation and Intimacies – if not in terms of plot or character, then in terms of narrative voice . . . Seductive in its consistency . . . Thrillingly done

Literary Review

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

Independent

With taut, hypnotic prose, Audition captures the unease of human connection and the inherent instability of self-presentation . . . A thrilling, disorienting read that lingers long after the final page

Exeter Living

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

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

Financial Times

A short, propulsive novel . . . Kitamura does a good job of creating a sense of the uncanny and feeling of dread

Daily Mail

A literary performance of true uncanniness: one that, in a very real sense, takes on life

Guardian

Highly accomplished . . . What makes Audition distinctive is a precision, a sharpness of focus

London Review of Books

Formally daring . . . The writing is as distinctive as ever in its concision and intelligence

Times Literary Supplement

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*

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*