Audition - A Novel

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY BARACK OBAMA, THE WASHINGTON POST, THE NEW YORKER, NPR, THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY, VOGUE, TIME MAGAZINE, MARIE CLAIRE, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE GUARDIAN AND MORE!

FINALIST FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE, THE JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE, THE GOTHAM BOOK PRIZE, AND THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR FICTION

LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE AND THE CAROL SHIELDS PRIZE FOR FICTION

INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER

“A tightly wound family drama that reads like a psychological thriller."—NPR

“Bold, stark, genre-bending, Audition will haunt your dreams.”—The Boston Globe

One woman, the performance of a lifetime. Or two. An exhilarating, destabilizing Möbius strip of a 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.