What is Real could Also be Unreal

The narrative explores how performance blurs the boundaries between identity, truth, and family

- By SHARMISTHA JHA

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2025, Katie Kitamura’s Audition is a profound meditation on the nature of performance and its place in the institution of family. Spare, unsettling, and psychologically astute, the book blurs the line between truth and illusion, between roles performed and lives lived. Composed of two narratives, it probes the fragile boundaries of identity, parenthood, and intimacy.

The first part opens with an unnamed narrator (a middle-aged woman) meeting a younger man (in his mid-twenties) for lunch. The woman is an established actress who can no longer distinguish between what is a performance and what is real. The young man claims to be her son. However, the narrator maintains that she never gave up any child for adoption. She never gave birth; she had an abortion. As the second part begins, the narrator and her husband, Tomas, invites Xavier to move into their home. He is their son, or so it seems.