Katie Kitamura's compelling novel Audition has earned a prestigious spot on the Booker Prize 2025 shortlist, marking a significant achievement in contemporary literature. The novel, published by Fern Press and spanning 197 pages, continues Kitamura's exploration of complex psychological landscapes that have characterized her previous acclaimed works.
The Unsettling World of Audition
In her fifth novel, Kitamura creates a narrative that exists simultaneously on literal and psychological stages. The story follows an unnamed middle-aged actress navigating the blurred boundaries between her professional performances and personal reality. Married to Tomas, an art critic known for his impeccable taste but emotional distance, the protagonist maintains a life of professional success shadowed by emotional uncertainty.
The novel's central conflict emerges when a young man named Xavier appears, claiming to be her son. This assertion, both absurd and strangely plausible, triggers a narrative split that forms the core of Kitamura's exploration. The first half of the novel features the actress firmly denying she ever had a child, while the second half immerses readers in a parallel reality where Xavier could indeed be her son.
Kitamura's Literary Evolution
Kitamura's previous novels, including A Separation (2017) and Intimacies (2021), established her reputation for creating narrators who interpret and translate the emotions of others. In Audition, she takes this thematic concern to its logical conclusion: her protagonist no longer merely interprets reality but actively performs it.
The novel extends beyond theatrical metaphor to examine the social choreography of everyday life. Every interaction, conversation, and relationship demands its own script, Kitamura suggests, making performance an essential aspect of human existence. This theme resonates particularly in urban environments where maintaining appearances becomes a constant performance.
The Power of Minimalist Prose
Kitamura's writing style in Audition demonstrates remarkable precision and restraint. Her prose remains pared back, with sentences that cut clean as glass and dialogue stripped of unnecessary ornamentation. This minimalist approach creates a claustrophobic, hypnotic atmosphere where every gesture carries significance and every pause hums with unspoken meaning.
The novel's narrator observes herself with the practiced precision of an actress deeply invested in representation. In one particularly revealing passage, she notes: "More and more often, I was surprised by the person in the mirror, it was not the lines at my mouth or the hollowness around my eyes, it was the lag in recognition that was the most troubling."
Breaking Conventional Narrative Frames
Where Kitamura's earlier works operated within tautly realist frameworks, Audition breaks these conventions entirely. The novel maintains its unsettling quality through measured pacing that allows disorientation to emerge gradually, much like shifting lighting that transforms a room before one notices the change.
Kitamura deliberately resists providing narrative closure, leaving central questions unanswered. Is Xavier really her son? Is Tomas unfaithful? Is the entire experience merely a rehearsal? These questions remain suspended, reflecting the author's interest in the charged stillness before performance rather than conventional revelation.
The novel captures the composed anxiety of urban life, particularly for those whose professional existence depends on visibility. It explores the quiet dread of identity erosion in middle age and the exhausting labor of maintaining appearances until the performed role becomes indistinguishable from the authentic self.
Priced at Rs 999, Audition represents a significant contribution to contemporary literary fiction and stands as a strong contender for the Booker Prize 2025, with winners scheduled to be announced in the coming months.
