Katie Kitamura’s Audition is perhaps the most stylistically advanced novel on the 2025 Booker Prize shortlist. It is unabashedly self-indulgent, star-struck by its own performance. And yet, it is a novel very aware of its making – unfolding in small acts and unpredictable reactions, asking: what do we do with our performative selves when the curtains go down?

The narrator, a middle-aged woman, cannot stop watching herself. We first meet her as a financially secure actor of moderate success. She’s not white, and her age and racial profile prevent her from being prolific, but she has high standards that she holds herself to. She’s performing even when she’s not – constantly addressing an audience that doesn’t exist. Almost everything in her existence – from her marriage to her stylish Manhattan apartment – is a prop in her performance. Her comments are offhanded yet pointed, displaying the earnestness of playing a complex role without revealing the arduous labour of perfecting it.

The novel is divided into two sections – the first one much shorter in comparison.

The narrator is meeting Xavier, a man “young enough to be her son”, at a restaurant. She’s anxious and alert to her surroundings, and feels suspicious gazes on her. The sexual pinings of...

Read more