Lost Horizon
by
James Hilton
Good Books rating 4.17
Technical:
- ID: 55
- Added: 2025-08-22
- Updated: 2025-09-02
- ISBN: 9780099595861
- Publisher: Random House
- Published: 2015-06-04
- Reviews: 4
Flying out of India, a light aircraft is hi-jacked and flown into the high Tibetan Himalayas. The few passengers on board anxiously await their fate, among them Conway, a talented British consul. But on landing they are unexpectedly conducted to a remote valley, a legendary paradise of peace and beauty, known as Shangri-La. Have they been kidnapped? Can they escape? And do they even want to? From the author of Goodbye Mr Chips, this is the epic adventure story of literature's most entrancing utopia and one of our most enduring literary mysteries.
Reviews
Pull quotes
- The lamasery – they find the central heating, modern bathes, musical instruments and other conveniences of the modern world there.
- Conway is amazed with the nature of the valley, the local mountain Karakal, people and their mentality.
- Mallinson is angry for all this situation and wants to go back home as early as possible.
Pull quotes
- A haunting tale about four passengers on a plane discovering the lost paradise, Shangri-la, hidden away in the distant Kunlun Mountains.
- Mallingson tells him that he is insane as they all say that about him in the outside and he should not believe what he does not see.
- Rutherford is more convinced. They hear nothing of Mallingson. When Rutherford questions a doctor about who brought Conway there, an old woman the oldest he has ever seen.
Pull quotes
- Mallinson panics, but Conway remains calm, even as the plane lands somewhere in the mountains for refueling.
- Chang promotes the lamasery’s view on moderation, which he says is also the method by which Shangri-La governs the society.
- The novel explores themes of Utopia as Refuge, The East as a Source of Wisdom, and The Tension Between Ambition and Idleness.
Pull quotes
- James Hilton tells the story of four Westerners who stumble upon a utopian lamasery hidden in the Himalayas.
- They discover a peaceful utopia where people age very slowly and live extraordinarily long lives.
- After regaining his memory and telling his fantastical tale, Conway vanished again, apparently seeking to return to Shangri-La.