Swallows

by Kirino, Natsuo | Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
Published 13/08/2026 by Canongate Books in the United Kingdom
Paperback | 352 pages
198 x 129mm | 242g

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.

Retired ballet star Motoi and his wife, Yuko, have spent years trying to conceive. As Motoi grows increasingly desperate for a child, 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 vision of contemporary Japan, and of a young woman's fight to preserve her dignity - at any cost.