The Twilight World

By: Werner Herzog, Michael Hofmann - translator

Narrated by: Werner Herzog

Brought to you by Penguin.

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 solider 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.

© Werner Herzog 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Critic reviews

Beautiful... Nobody else could have written The Twilight World. It is pure Herzog

Herzog's writing bristles with the same eerie and uncompromising energy as his films. His jungle pulses with hallucinatory life

An enthralling novel that explores the nature of time and warfare with great mastery

A mesmerising account

Herzog's skills as a filmmaker and dramatist serve the narrative well... In spare, elegant prose, he analyses how isolation effects Onoda... The Twilight World is an austere book, and a wise one

The Twilight World...is very cinematic: indeed, it feels like a film unspooling inside Herzog's head as you read

This is Herzog's debut novel - and it is beautifully crafted, a literary jewel set to sparkle against the backdrop of his monumental career in cinema

Herzog...brilliantly blends fact and fiction in this fever dream of a novel, which shimmers with the single-minded strangeness of Onoda's thoughts and feelings

The true story is extraordinary in its own right, but Herzog's concise yet meandering account of unending loyalty, resilience and desolation transmutes Onoda's personal history into a poetic tragedy

(praise for Of Walking In Ice:) Surely the strangest, strongest walking book I know, it tells the story of a winter pilgrimage, made in desperation and in hope. At once a diary, a blizzard of weather and memories, and the record of a ritual: only Herzog could have written this weird, slender classic (Robert Macfarlane, author of Underland)

The great Werner Herzog's voice

Very concise and powerful short novel about Hiroo Onada the famed Japanese soldier who kept on fighting in the islands of the Philippines, decades after the end of the Pacific War, by the acclaimed Werner Herzog. A unique perspective on the hardships of life by one familiar with the abject awfulness of the jungle. Told in straightforward fashion, without over analyzing. Certainly an interesting way to learn about this bizarre and rather tragic story, and for you to make conclusions about this yourself.