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Katie Kitamura on Fiction’s Shifting Realities

25 July 2025

Katie Kitamura joins Adam Biles to discuss her remarkable novel Audition. Centred on a middle-aged actress whose settled life is upended by a young man claiming to be her son, Audition blurs the lines between performance, identity, and narrative certainty. Kitamura reflects on the novel’s dual structure—a “rabbit-duck” ambiguity—and her fascination with roles we perform in relationships, particularly within marriage and family. The conversation explores the mutability of identity, the ethical power of embracing contradiction, and the unique capacity of the novel to hold multiple truths simultaneously. Kitamura also discusses craft, genre, and the challenges of maintaining ambiguity without sacrificing narrative tension. An essential listen for readers drawn to fiction that resists easy answers and revels in complexity.