The English-language title of this novel is derived from the original Japanese title 燕は戻ってこない (Tsubame wa Modottekonai), which means literally “The swallows don’t return.”
This explicitly evokes an image of migratory swallows that leave and never come back.
The story follows Riki, a 29-year-old financially precarious temp worker in Tokyo who agrees to be a surrogate mother for a wealthy couple.
As the story unfolds, the characters treat reproduction, bodies, and relationships like transactional “flights.” Ovum, wombs, money, and affection move from one person to another, often with the expectation that security, love, or status will “come back” in return.
The migratory swallows in the title encapsulate the novel’s central question: when everything becomes a transaction, what — if anything — returns to you, and what is gone for good?