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by Werner Herzog
The great filmmaker Werner Herzog, in his first novel, tells the incredible story of Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier who defended a small island in the Philippines for twenty-nine years after the end of World War II.
In 1997, Werner Herzog was in Tokyo to direct an opera. His hosts asked him, Whom would you like to meet? He replied instantly: Hiroo Onoda. Onoda was a former soldier famous for having quixotically defended an island in the Philippines for decades after World War II, unaware the fighting was over. Herzog and Onoda developed an instant rapport and would meet many times, talking for hours and together unraveling the story of Onoda's long war.
At the end of 1944, on Lubang Island in the Philippines, with Japanese troops about to withdraw, Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda was given orders by his superior officer: Hold the island until the Imperial army's return. You are to defend its territory by guerrilla tactics, at all costs...There is only one rule. You are forbidden to die by your own hand. In the event of your capture by the enemy, you are to give them all the misleading information you can. So began Onoda's long campaign, during which he became fluent in the hidden language of the jungle. Soon weeks turned into months, months into years, and years into decades—until eventually time itself seemed to melt away. All the while Onoda continued to fight his fictitious war, at once surreal and tragic, at first with other soldiers, and then, finally, alone, a character in a novel of his own making.
In The Twilight World, Herzog immortalizes and imagines Onoda's years of absurd yet epic struggle in an inimitable, hypnotic style—part documentary, part poem, and part dream—that will be instantly recognizable to fans of his films. The result is a novel completely unto itself, a sort of modern-day Robinson Crusoe tale: a glowing, dancing meditation on the purpose and meaning we give our lives.
"[M]arked by graceful prose...Herzog fans will hope for a film to come. Meanwhile, this evocation of loyalty to a lost cause serves beautifully." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"[F]ascinating...captivating...This will whet the reader's appetite for a film version." - Publishers Weekly
"Through spare language and minimal detail that recall Herzog's screenwriting technique, together with great leaps through time, the novel spans the full 29 years of Onoda's remarkable story while keeping the focus on him...A brief but powerful and noteworthy addition to the résumé of a master storyteller; fans of Herzog's films will see the filmmaker's cinematic fingerprints all over this absurdist, if absorbing, story." - Library Journal
"Legendary filmmaker Herzog distills a brooding, poetic novella...from the true story of a WWII soldier who kept up the fight until 1974...Journalistic accounts and a documentary film emphasize Onoda's extreme endurance and unmatched delusion. But Herzog, ever in pursuit of deeper truths, sees in Onoda's predicament an all-too-ordinary tendency to subordinate facts to master narratives." - Booklist
This information about The Twilight World 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.
Werner Herzog was born in Munich on September 5, 1942. He made his first film in 1961 at the age of nineteen. Since then he has produced, written, and directed more than sixty feature and documentary films, including Aguirre, Nosferatu, Fitzcarraldo, Little Dieter Needs to Fly, My Best Fiend, Grizzly Man, Encounters at the End of the World, and Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Herzog has published more than a dozen books of prose and directed as many operas. He lives in Munich and Los Angeles.
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