The Bridegroom Was a Dog

Yoko Tawada

Pearls series

Her masterpiece.

Parul Sehgal, The New York Times

A bizarre tale of passion and romance between a schoolteacher and a dog

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The Bridegroom Was a Dog

by Yoko Tawada

Translated from Japanese by Margaret Mitsutani

The Bridegroom Was a Dog is perhaps the Japanese writer Yoko Tawada’s most famous work. Its initial publication in 1998 garnered admiration from _The New Yorker, _ which praised it as a “fast-moving, mysteriously compelling tale that has the dream quality of Kafka.”

The Bridegroom Was a Dog begins with a schoolteacher telling a fable to her students. In the fable, a princess promises her hand in marriage to a dog that has licked her bottom clean. The story takes an even stranger twist when that very dog appears to the schoolteacher in real life as a doglike man. A romantic — and sexual — courtship develops, much to the chagrin of her friends, who have suspicions about the man’s identity.

Paperback(published Nov, 07 2012)

ISBN
9780811220378
Price US
10.95
Price CN
11.99
Page Count
60

Ebook(published Nov, 07 2012)

ISBN
9780811220606
Price US
10.95
Portrait of Yoko Tawada

Yoko Tawada

Contemporary Japanese-German prose writer

Her masterpiece.

Parul Sehgal, The New York Times

Masterly.

The New York Times

Like putting a sensor on [Tawada’s] dream-brain and putting the other sensor on your own brain.

Aimee Bender

Brilliant shimmering strangeness.

Rivka Galchen

In Tawada’s work, one has the feeling of having wandered into a mythology that is not one’s own.

Rivka Galchen