There is a surreal bawdiness that gives this strange little story the feel of an erotic folk tale. It's easy to get lost in the playful and mischievous world that Tawada develops. —Recommended by Luke, City Lights Books
Internationally acclaimed author Yoko Tawada's most famous — and bizarre — tale in a stand-alone, New Directions Pearl edition.
The Bridegroom Was a Dog is perhaps the Japanese-German writer Yoko Tawada's most famous story. Its initial publication in 1998 garnered admiration from The New Yorker, who praised it as, "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 dog-like man. They develop a very sexual, romantic courtship with many allegorical overtones — much to the chagrin of her friends.
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