A National Bestseller! 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 ...

Given Werner Herzog's talent as a director and given how crazy the subject was, we had pretty high hopes for this novelization of the experiences of the Japanese soldier who remained at his post in the Philippines for decades after the war ended. It's a really ripe topic to explore which makes it really shocking how little the novel does with it. It's not the book is bad -- it does a serviceable job of providing the setting and going through the history of how the soldier ended up isolated and what his inner experience may have been. But the story never does more than just give you glimpses of moments in his history. Given the isolation, the anachronism of thinking the war was going on while the world moved on, and the ideas of dedication and loyalty, you can just imagine a ton of experimental and powerful things an author could have done to make this story shine. But here Herzog just presents it in an almost matter-of-fact way. We really weren't sure what we gained from reading the novel that we didn't get just from hearing the premise. It's not a hard book to read and it's not painful to get through. The writing is fine and the interior monologue is believable. You'll get through it fast if you try. But we're not sure why you would when there is so little that's interesting happening in it.