Lost Horizon

I readily recommend this book, but read my next sentence! I took off 1 Star only because the novel was written 90 years ago & the English language has changed so much that at times I had some difficulty understanding what was being said. Other than that, I enjoyed the story very much. The beginning was a slow start, but that didn't last once the main story began. I found myself feeling envious of the main characters! As our world has lately been turned upside down & inside out, I often feel I would be thrilled to find myself in a place such as they found themselves! A place where there is peace & quiet always! No politics!! No war. No greed. No hate. Everyone gets along with the others. Almost no quarreling, & what there is, is really very minor. And THAT was amongst our main characters, not the people of this wonderful land!! Rarely any illness. Living to be over 100 y/o & still be as one in their 40's! Not even THEN beginning to age! Perhaps even living multiple centuries! I'm not ready for THAT, but the rest sounds pretty wonderful! Surrounded by beauty, both man-made & natural. Many thousands of books to read & musical scores to play! And ever more being created! Never a hurry to do something because you've got almost all the time in the world! Who WOULDN'T want to be there? Sounds too good to be true, because it is, but it makes for a lovely story. I'll see a place similar, but ever so much better, & I hope you will as well, just not in this world! Their perfect world is called Shangri-La, mine is called Heaven.

I read this book some 60 years in high school. Recently that memory came into my mind. So I bought the book and reread it for curiosity and pleasure. James Hiltin kept my attention from the opening to the last sentence! I didn't know what to make of the book in literature all those years ago. Nothing has changed! 🤣

Every so often, I like to read a classic author especially in the science fiction genre. I like to see how these early genre authors saw the future, the future of technology, and how the authors predict how people will act in the future. While Lost Horizon actually is of the fantasy genre, it offers an insight on how people of the 1930s saw the world and may act in a totally different situation.The novel starts with four men after dinner talking about the events in Baskul where civilians were evacuated owing to a rioting. Four were flown in a special airplane that went missing. One of the four was a British Foreign Service officer, Conway. All had not been seen since. Later the narrator left with another man left together, and the conversation continued. The narrator told a story of finding Conway in China and accompanying him part of the way home. During this time, Conway regains his memory and tells the narrator what happened, who writes the story down and gives the manuscript for the other to read.The main storyline starts with the evacuation of Baskul and catching the last plane out. The four are Conay, H.M. Consul, Captain Mallinson, H.M. Vice-Counsul Miss Brinklow, a British missionary, and Barnard, an American. They discover the next morning that they are travelling in the wrong direction. The plane lands on a plateau with a small village where they refuel and take off again. They fly into the mountains and run out of gas and crash. They are rescued and brought to an entrance of a protected valley, Shangri-La. The main storyline unfolds as they learn of their situation. They will have to stay until the porters come next in two months.This novel is a fantasy as Shangri-La does not exist otherwise it is essentially an adventure genre as the main storyline follows the four main characters as they react to this new situation in which they find themselves. I liked how the author portrays these characters as slowly changing and the character reasons as their stay lengthens. While there is intrigue and a little conflict as the outlook of the four diverge.As this novel was written in the early 1930s, I also found it interesting several times during the novel the fear of strategic bombings is raised. During World War I this type of bombing was introduced. While it was not very successful at the time, many air power advocates, like Giulio Douhet, started to redefine this concept. I learned this during a history class, but I saw that it was a real issue in the minds of several of the characters in the novel and probably of the population in general. Lastly, one of the main characters is an American. The author had the British speak in British English and the American speaks in American English. It enhanced the attention to detail in the author’s portraying the characters.For the down side, this novel is only 137 pages, and I thought it may be a quick read. I was wrong. Reading this novel took as long as a 400 page novel. Especially in the prologue many British informal words were used that were common at the time. I like reading British police procedures, and I had not come across most of these words before.Overall, I did enjoy reading this novel. This novel is not action-packed thriller, more adventure. It met my requirements of seeing the world in the eyes of an author in the 1930s. I rate this novel with four stars. Also, if you have watched the movie based on this novel, the saying that the novel is always better than the movie is very true in this case. For example, you will learn who the pilot was, and why he chose these four people to kidnap. Learn this and more.

I watch the 1937 movie on the TY during the mid 40's. The movie pretty much followed the book.

I was so fully engaged in this story, of what it was, what it could be… Then it abruptly ended without resolution. I thought a chapter was missing. Nope; just an abrupt ending.

Genre: utopian fiction (novella)Just finished this classic, best known as the origin of the mythic Shangri-la.After being hijacked on a plane, escaping India Conway and 3 other passengers are rescued by inhabitants of the hidden lamasery of Shangri-la. Conway, a survivor of WWI, finds peace in the utopian valley, but not everyone is happy in this paradise.Part adventure, part mystery, and part philosophy, this novel predicted the second world war and has inspired movies, comics, mudic, other writers, and even presidents.It was an interesting read, though I was hoping the adventure parts would be stronger (there's a rather slow bit in the middle without much action where you get narration of Shangri-la's history).“The storm … this storm you talked of .…” “It will be such a one, my son, as the world has not seen before. There will be no safety by arms, no help from authority, no answer in science. It will rage until every flower of culture is trampled, and all human things are leveled in vast chaos. Such was my vision when Napoleon was still a name unknown; and I see it now, more clearly with each hour. Do you say I am mistaken?”"The airman bearing loads of death to the great cities will not pass our way, and if by chance he should he may not consider us worth a bomb.”Winner of the Hawthornden Prize in 1934

With great imagination of split world, one of darkness and war, and one of life and joy, harmony and light, we can all use a little bit of uplifting daydreaming of better worlds. If a person considers this world as the dark and the Shangri-La as the Paradise in the Bible, it makes if a very reasonable basis of hope for the future.

I came to this after watching the Frank Capra/Ronald Colman film, which I loved. Am pleased that the original novel was just as magical. Hugh Conway is a British diplomat trying to evacuate a group of Westerners from a revolution-hit Chinese city. Commandeering a small aircraft they wind up in the Tibetan mountains, at a mysterious monastery, Shangri-La, where the inhabitants all seem to live an inordinately long time. Conway is a WW1 veteran, still haunted by those apocalyptic 4 years, and he is drawn to the peaceful, rarefied way of life at the monastery. His young colleague, Mallinson, is not so sure though and senses something sinister about the place. This becomes even more so when he falls for Lo-Tsen, a beautiful young girl, who has been told that if she tries to leave the place she will age dramatically. The Utopian lifestyle of Shangri-La has been criticised over the years. Some regarding it as a thinly veiled form of Communism, whereas Graham Greene thought it was all a bit too Californian (or the film version at any rate). The book is 90-years-old, so inevitably some of it has dated, particularly the way the resident menfolk seem to regard the local women as a necessary convenience, in the sexual sense. But there is a strange magic to the story, and it raises some interesting questions about extreme longevity. Given a choice, would you pick a normal life in a normal lifespan, and all that that entails, or a very long life, but you have to live it completely secluded from reality and the rest of the world up a mountain? For Conway, having survived one war, and now faced with the prospect of another one in the near future, it's all quite a dilemma. I understand this version isn't the full book, that there is an epilogue. I looked up the ending on Wikipedia, and it does seem rather more poignant than the somewhat rushed ending here.

Die Sprache ist wie erwartet, das zwischen den Weltriegen gesprochene Britische English gebildeter Engländer, aber in Wikipedia wurde von einer Einleitung gesprochen - die scheint hier zu fehlen? Oder handelt es sich hier um eine "gekindelte" Version?

Avrei voluto la versione in italiano

Je connais bien ce livre. J'aime le relire de temps en temps.

Ordered in hardback. Timely delivery. Utterly satisfied. The book is way too intriguing. Every word is framed to soothe mind and soul. My first book of Hilton. I would recommend everybody to read this at least once. You can't help thinking about shangri la, the tibetan mountains and from now everytime i will look at full moon 🌒, i will be lost in thoughts about possibility of calmer, elegant life. This is the beauty of this book. It challenges your beliefs, day to day hustle. It pushes you to delve deeper . Anyway, it is must to escape from the worldly chaos we are facing now. If not philosophical, it definitely is a worthy escape and great fun. A must read epic!