Audition

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE**
**LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMENS PRIZE FOR FICTION 2026**
**A FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION**
**A WATERSTONES PAPERBACK OF THE YEAR 2026**

A GUARDIAN, INDEPENDENT and NEW STATESMAN Book of the Year

Slick, sharp, strange and singular . . . You’ll gulp this novel down in one in-breathSAMANTHA HARVEY, Booker Prize-winning author of Orbital

A lightning bolt of a novelFINANCIAL TIMES

I’m not sure there’s anyone better writing in America todayALEX PRESTON, Observer

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.