Her masterpiece.
— Parul Sehgal, The New York Times
A bizarre tale of passion and romance between a schoolteacher and a dog
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.
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
