Kitamura's great talent is describing the minutiae of human connections, how in the course of seconds an interaction can provoke sympathy, then irritation, followed by confusion. She can turn a single exchange into a symphony of implications * The Times *
Kitamura is unparalleled . . . Always engaging and thought-provoking . . . Audition is a lightning bolt of a novel * Financial Times *
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* *
Kitamura's novels are short, sharp and deadly. I'm not sure there's anyone better writing in America today -- Alex Preston * Observer *
A literary performance of true uncanniness: one that, in a very real sense, takes on life * Guardian *
Audition has powerful things to say about our present destabilised society . . . This superb, thoughtful novel resonated long after finishing * Independent *
A quiet novel about the ways we hide our true selves from others - and ourselves -- Barack Obama
Kitamura is always worth reading * Evening Standard *
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 *
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* *
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
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 *
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
A blisteringly incisive, coolly devastating tour de force of controlled menance . . . Bold, stark, genre-bending, Audition will haunt your dreams * Boston Globe *
Kitamura . . . has quietly built a reputation as one of America's best contemporary writers * BBC *
A short, propulsive novel . . . Kitamura does a good job of creating a sense of the uncanny and feeling of dread * Daily Mail *
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
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
You won't really know what Audition is about until you read it (an