Do yourself a favour – don’t read The Twilight World by Werner Herzog, let Herzog read it to you. Most audio book sites (like Audible) now offer Herzog reading his new novel The Twilight World and it’s a pure pleasure. You simply cannot beat the gravitas of his delivery. The book proves, yet again, that filmmakers make the best writers and vice versa. It’s the fictionalized biographical portrait of Hiroo Onoda the Imperial Japanese soldier who famously did not surrender at the end of WWII and spent three decades in the Philippines until his former commander relieved him from duty by order of Emperor Shōwa in 1974. It’s a book about the tragedy, magic and folly of the single perspective human existence. (Exotic to me as I am, quite obviously, a multi-perspective Yeti in a human suit.)
What you should know is that writers recycle their lives into fiction and here Herzog is likely recycling the years he spent filming Fitzcarraldo in the Amazon basin. The jungles of Onoda are an echo of Herzog’s own endless war to birth this film. It’s a beautiful and lush yet short book. This won’t kill you. It’s not a tough read but, it will pull you to a distant place for an altered state of mind. If the life of a meticulous hermit suits you, this is the book for you. If ideologically hunting Yeti amuses you, finding Onoda is a prize consolation. The very best quote from this book is a simple sentence fragment, a sort of Herzogian haiku.
“Onoda… Yeti… panda.”
The Twilight World by Werner Herzog
On the theme of Herzogian hermitism, I’ve recommended Happy People: A Year in the Taiga before. It’s my favourite Herzog film and quite simply the most beautiful love letter ever written to Siberian winters.
