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A bizarre tale of passion and romance between a schoolteacher and a dog, from the incomparable National Book Award-winning Yoko Tawada.
Masterfully turning the rules of folklore and fable on their head, The Bridegroom Was a Dog is a disarming and unforgettable modern classic. 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.
"Her masterpiece." ―The New York Times
This information about The Bridegroom Was a Dog was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
credit: Nina Subin
Born in Tokyo in 1960, Yoko Tawada writes in both Japanese and German: she has received the Akutagawa, Kleist, Lessing, Noma, Adelbert von Chamisso, and Tanizaki prizes, as well as the Goethe Medal. Her novel The Emissary won the National Book Award. Rivka Galchen in the New York Times Magazine hailed her work as "magnificently strange."
If you liked The Bridegroom Was a Dog, try these:
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Published 2026
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by Kim Fu
Published 2022
A dazzling and daring debut story collection by PEN/Hemingway finalist, Kim Fu.
by Sohn Won-pyung
Published 2021
The Emissary meets The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime in this poignant and triumphant story about how love, friendship, and persistence can change a life forever.
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