Description

In 1944, Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda is ordered to hold Lubang Island in the Philippines at all costs, and he obeys until long after the war is over.

The Twilight World follows Onoda as he wages a private war in the jungle for thirty years after Japan’s surrender in the Second World War. Convinced that every leaflet announcing peace is enemy propaganda, he survives on stolen rice, wild fruit and dwindling hope, watching his comrades die or surrender one by one.

As decades pass and the world moves on without him, Onoda’s devotion to the Imperial army traps him between duty and delusion. The enemy he fights is no longer American soldiers, but time itself.

Based on real events, The Twilight World is twentieth-century historical fiction about obedience, pride and the slow unravelling of a man who cannot let go.

‘An enthralling novel that explores the nature of time and warfare with great mastery’ Mail on Sunday

‘Herzog. . .brilliantly blends fact and fiction in this fever dream of a novel’ Daily Mail

‘A literary jewel set to sparkle against the backdrop of his monumental career in cinema’ i

Publisher Review

Beautiful... Nobody else could have written The Twilight World. It is pure Herzog * Sunday Times * Herzog's writing bristles with the same eerie and uncompromising energy as his films. His jungle pulses with hallucinatory life * Guardian * An enthralling novel that explores the nature of time and warfare with great mastery * Mail on Sunday * A mesmerising account * Financial Times * 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 * Literary Review *