Abstract. We determine the structure of Hopf algebras that admit an extension of a group algebra by the cyclic group of order 2. We study the corepresentation theory of such Hopf algebras, which provide a generalization, at the Hopf algebra level, of the so called Tambara-Yamagami fusion categories. As a byproduct, we show that every semisimple Hopf algebra of dimension < 36 is necessarily group-theoretical; thus 36 is the smallest possible dimension where a non group-theoretical example occurs.