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.