Swallows

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.

About the Author :
Natsuo Kirino is one of Japan's most highly decorated authors. In 1993, she won the Edogawa Rampo Prize for Rain Falling on My Face. In 1998, she won the Mystery Writers of Japan Award for OUT, in 1999 the Naoki Prize for Sweetcheeks, in 2003 the Izumi Kyoka Prize for Grotesque, in 2004 the Shibata Renzaburo Prize for What Remains, in 2005 the Fujin Koron Literary Award for Awakening!, in 2008 the Tanizaki Junichiro Prize for Tokyo-Jima, in 2009 the Murasaki Shikibu Literary Prize for The Goddess Chronicle, and in 2010 and 2011 the Shima Kiyoshi Romance Literature Prize and the Yomiuri Literary Prize for What on Earth Would There Be? In 2015, she was awarded the Medal with Purple Ribbon and in 2021 the Waseda University Tsubouchi Shoyo Grand Prize. In 2011, she won the Mainichi Art Award and in 2023, the Yoshikawa Eiji Literary Prize for Swallows - her fifth novel to be translated into English. A TV adaptation of Swallows aired in summer 2024 to great critical acclaim. kirino-natsuo.com

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 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 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? 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 Praise for Natsuo Kirino: 'A taut, disturbing and timeless tale, filled with rage and pathos Japan's writer of the moment Daring and disturbing . . . [Kirino is] prepared to push the human limits of this world . . . Remarkable Lyrical, with an impelling storyline that demands attention 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 An utterly absorbing novel that gives as vivid - and disturbing - a picture of contemporary Japan as you could imagine