Description

Twenty-nine-year-old Riki is sick of her dead-end job, of struggling to get by ever since she moved to Tokyo from the country. So when someone offers her the chance to become a surrogate in return for a life-changing amount of money, it’s hard to turn down. But how much of herself will she be forced to give away?

Retired ballet star Motoi and his wife, Yuko, have spent years trying to conceive. As Yuko begins to make peace with her childlessness, Motoi grows increasingly desperate for a child to whom he can pass on his elite genes. Their last resort is surrogacy; a business transaction, plain and simple. But as they try to exert ever more control over Riki, their contract with her starts to slip through their fingers . . .

Vibrating with the injustices of class and gender, tradition and power, Swallows is an acerbic, witty vision of contemporary Japan, and of a young woman’s fight to preserve her dignity – at any cost.

Publisher Review

Natsuo Kirino’s novels bring us into direct contact with human life. Her fearless pen forces us to confront the ugliness, intensity and depth of our own desires, to the point that we cannot look away. But just as those desires reach a fever-pitch, she restores our faith in humanity, in a way that only Kirino can. The relentless beauty of her stories leaves me breathless every time — MIEKO KAWAKAMI Frank, tender, expansive, and radically embodied, Swallows centres the commodification of female fertility to explore how people live, love, work, dream and die today. Luminous — TESS GUNTY A timely and engrossing drama about desire, precarity, and the uses of a woman’s body. Kirino’s psychologically compelling and sharp-witted storytelling draws us into her characters’ lives, leaving us to answer: do our bodies have a price and who gets to decide? — RUTH OZEKI A masterful feat of storytelling as well as a biting critique of gender, patrimony and class. . . A writer in effortless command of her craft, Kirino brilliantly upends our expectations at every twist and turn. Just when you thought things could not get any more complicated, she deftly ups the ante. The resulting tension builds to a startling ending that both disturbs and delights — JULIE OTSUKA Praise for Natsuo Kirino: ‘A taut, disturbing and timeless tale, filled with rage and pathos — TAN TWAN ENG * * Guardian * * Japan’s writer of the moment * * New York Times * * Daring and disturbing . . . [Kirino is] prepared to push the human limits of this world . . . Remarkable * * Los Angeles Times * * Lyrical, with an impelling storyline that demands attention * * Independent on Sunday * * One of the most unexpected and playful novels to emerge from Japan in recent years . . . a triumph. In its boldness and originality, it broadens our sense of what modern Japanese fiction can be * * Telegraph * * An utterly absorbing novel that gives as vivid – and disturbing – a picture of contemporary Japan as you could imagine * * Metro * *