The Bridegroom Was a Dog

by Tawada, Yoko; Mitsutani, Margaret

• ISBN13: 9784770029409
• ISBN10: 4770029403
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-08-01
• Publisher: Kodansha USA Inc

Summary

In the title story of this collection, an offbeat crammer teacher recounts atory of a princess who is betrothed to a dog as a reward for licking herottom clean, only to have her own life turned upside down by the appearancef a dog-like man with a predilection for the same part of her anatomy.

Author Biography

YOKO TAWADA was born in Tokyo in 1960 and educated at Waseda University, and now lives in Germany. She made her debut as a writer with "Missing Heels," which was awarded the Gunzo Prize for New Writers in 1991. In 1993 she received the prestigious Akutagawa Prize-Japan's equivalent of a Booker or a Pulitzer-for "The Bridegroom Was a Dog." And in 1996 she won the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize, a German award to foreign writers recognized for their contribution to German culture. She has also been given the Prize in Literature from the City of Hamburg (1990) and the Lessing Prize (1994).
Her fiction and poetry have been featured in journals and anthologies in France, Holland, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, but the present collection is the first to appear in English. This has since been followed by Where Europe Begins (New Directions, 2002).
The Translator: MARGARET MITSUTANI has a Master's degree in Comparative Literature from Tokyo University and now teaches at Kyoritsu Women's University in Tokyo. Her previous translations include Kenzaburo Oe's novel An Echo of Heaven and several short stories by Kyoko Hayashi.