Audition

By: Ryu Murakami

Narrated by: Kenichiro Thomson

Bloomsbury presents Audition by Ryu Murakami, read by Kenichiro Thomson

Since the death of his wife seven years ago, documentary maker Aoyama has not dated anyone else. Now even his teenage son, Shige, thinks that he should remarry and his best friend Yoshikawa comes up with a plan: to hold fake film auditions from which, he can choose a new bride. Of the thousands who apply, it is a beautiful ballerina, Yamasaki Asami, who captivates Aoyama. Infatuated by her fragile nature and nervous smile, he ignores his increasing sense of unease, putting aside his doubts about his new love, until it may be too late...

In Audition, Ryu Murakami delivers his most subtly disturbing novel yet, confirming him as Japan's master of the psycho-thriller.©2009 Ryu Murakami (P)2025 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Critic reviews

‘The prose in these passages is elegiac and affecting, but it has the sharp, visceral feel of the butcher's knife or surgeons scalpel ...a highly compulsive, one-sitting read, and Audition should add to the Renaissance Man's growing fanbase in the English speaking world'

‘Sex, blood and the media (shaken violently) ... in the Bret Easton Ellis/Chuck Palahniuk mode'

‘A serious shocker - an inside-out romance'

‘A haunting Japanese version of a David Lynch nightmare' (for PIERCING)