Michael Hofmann

"Werner Herzog, one of the most revered filmmakers of all time, in his first book in many years, tells the story of Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier who continued to defend a small island in the Philippines for twenty-nine years after the end of World War Two In 1997, Werner Herzog was in Tokyo to direct an opera. His hosts there asked, whom would you like to meet? He replied instantly: Hiroo Onoda. Onoda was a former solider famous for having quixotically...

A blackly humorous story of loneliness, deception, and life in old age by one of the most accomplished novelists of the twentieth century.
On a rainy Sunday afternoon in January, the recently widowed Mrs. Palfrey moves to the Claremont Hotel in South Kensington. “If it’s not nice, I needn’t stay,” she promises herself, as she settles into this haven for the genteel and the decayed.
“Three elderly widows...