Hikâye çeşitli amaçlarla Çin'de bulunan dört kişinin iç savaş nedeniyle ülkeyi terk etmek üzere bir uçağa binmeleriyle başlıyor. Bu yolculardan ikisi Dış İşleri çalışanı olan İngiliz, biri İngiliz kadın misyoner, diğeri ise kim olduğu net olmayan bir Amerikalı. Bu dört kişinin bulunduğu uçak kaçırılıyor ve kimselerin bilmediği bir yere inmek durumunda kalıyor. Aksi gibi kendilerini kaçıran kişi de ölünce ne yapacaklarını bilemiyorlar; fakat tam bu sıralarda ilginç bir kafileyle karşılaşıyorlar. Bu kafile onlara dönmeleri için uygun ortam sağlanıncaya kadar manastırlarında, Şangri-La'da, misafir etmeyi öneriyor. Onlar da mecburen bu öneriyi kabul ediyorlar; fakat en sonunda manastıra ulaştıklarında hiç beklemedikleri rahat, konforlu, huzurlu bir ortamla karşı karşıya kalıyorlar. James Hilton’s bestselling adventure novel about a military man who stumbles on the world’s greatest hope for peace deep in Tibet: Shangri-La. Mallinson wants to hire help and leave, but Chang stops him politely. The others eventually decide they are happy to stay. Miss Brinklow will teach the people a sense of sin. Barnard wants to hide form the police and look for gold. Conway likes the quiet life of study. A beautiful story set deep with in the Himalayans, sits a mysterious place known only to a few as Shangri-La. I would take this book to a desert island; he'll follow me in my removals. I read it, not because it was the favorite book of the 32nd American president, Franklin Roosevelt, but because it is part of my reading-learning.

The novel was published in 1933. Hilton had just reached the age of call-up when World War I ended. His generation was deeply effected by the war and he had personal pacifist beliefs. Lost Horizon uses that message in a mild way. It can be enjoyed as a fantasy/utopian novel but you are always aware of the times in the world outside of Shangri-la, with Hitler and his ilk a threat. A one-hour adaptation by James Hilton and Barbara Burnham was broadcast on the BBC National Programme at 20:30 on 1 August 1935, [7] with a cast that included Esme Percy as "the High Lama", Ben Welden as "Barnard", Barbara Couper as "Miss Brinklow", Jon Swinley as "Conway" and Cathleen Cordell as "Lo Tsen". [8] It was broadcast again on 2 August 1935, 30 and 31 January 1936, 30 October 1939 and 9 April 1945. Hamilton, Curtiss (6 August 1943). "He Flew From 'Shangri-La' to Bomb Tokyo - The War Illustrated". The War Illustrated. J.C. Koppes. Archived from the original on 18 December 2019 . Retrieved 15 November 2021. For a year the world knew no more than that U.S. planes had bombed Japan from a base which President Roosevelt called "Shangri-La" in playful allusion to the mythical country of James Hilton's novel, Lost Horizon. The crux to the perfection of Shangra-La is that there aging is greatly slowed, slowed so much that its inhabitants tend toward wisdom, have the opportunity to reflect, to gain perspective, to really grow up. The contemplation of such a society, fleshed out in a novel, caused me to consider how the fear of growing old, disabled and unappealing may well be the greatest of human anxieties, that the pursuit of wealth and power may, in fact, resolve into that deeper fear, representing palliatives against the inevitable.U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt named the Presidential hideaway in Maryland after Shangri-La. Now it is called Camp David. Roosevelt also lied to the public and said that the Doolittle Raid came from Shangri-La. This became the idea to name an aircraft carrier USS Shangri-La. Four people are kidnapped in a plane and land in the unknown regions of Tibet. There they embark on a physical and spiritual journey to a Utopian society of Lamas living deep within the beautiful mountains of the east. Here they are learning about transcending their lives to something wonderous and more meaningful. I've long been intrigued and appalled at the depravity of elites, wondering at how many persons can cause so much pain and suffering to others in their pursuit of political and economic power. Some of it, of course, can simply be explained as consequent upon the systems they work within. I myself, when a university administrator, played the institution's games, seeking promotion within it. But the influence of an American university on people's lives seemed hardly capable of being malign except perhaps in matters of property acquisition. Our conscious concerns, as regards our publics, were with providing services, raising consciousness and expanding empathic awareness. Still, from a broader view, we were part of a system, whether it be conceived in terms of U.S. imperialism or global capitalism, which certainly does do a great deal of damage. In that sense there was complicity, though we conveniently were able to assuage our guilt, even feel virtuous, by sponsoring Peace Studies programs and Radical Scholars' conferences.

I was fascinated by the writing, the straightforward narrative, and the story: incredible and dreamlike; the reader feels like a waking dream. But, on the other hand, the plot is sober: four characters, whose character and reasons for their improbable meeting we will gradually learn to know, find themselves prisoners of a lamasery in the depths of Tibet, a country still mythical for Westerners. Everyone has their reasons for adapting to this golden prison or for wanting to escape from it at all costs. James Hilton, (born September 9, 1900, Leigh, Lancashire, England—died December 20, 1954, Long Beach, California, U.S.), English novelist whose popular works include Lost Horizon (1933), Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1934), and Random Harvest (1941), all of which were made into highly successful motion pictures. The book served as the basis for the unsuccessful 1956 Broadway musical Shangri-La. [10] Publications edit There is a lot of dialogue here - both spoken and internal - and very little action. But it tells an interesting story that fits in well with both the British fascination with Tibet (beginning with the Raj and early Survey of India, and running through the Younghusband expedition/invasion of the early 1900's before reaching a sort of nadir with the embarrassing T. Lobsang Rampa episode of the 60's and 70's), and the uncertainly of the later between-war period. Kept secret from the world for more than two hundred years, Shangri-La is like paradise—a place whose inhabitants live for centuries amid the peace and harmony of the fertile valley. But when the leader of the Shangri-La monastery falls ill, Conway and the others must face the daunting prospect of returning home to a world about to be torn open by war.Doesn¹t pound in your ears anymore. ♪♫♪But I did not know neither the words nor the melody of the 3rd to the 6th lines of each stanza. So, I went to www.lyrics.com and searched for this song. There is actually a 3rd stanza but I did not know how to sing it too. Do you know how the whole song goes? This is the 1937 theme song for the Frank Capra’s movie adaptation of James Hilton’s 1933 wondrous classic Lost Horizon and I only know the first two lines. Pity me. It’s very soulful and melodious as it creates images of peace and quiet, of being in harmony with nature, like going to a serene, restful place. The book describes how war on the ground would move into the air. Life and all special things could be lost, even history. Maybe Shangri-la would protect these important things for later when the world was tired of war. That was the real purpose of the city. Ronald Colman reprised his screen role of "Robert Conway" a number of times for radio, including on the Lux Radio Theatre (15 September 1941), Academy Award (27 November 1946) and Favorite Story (24 July 1948). If you hear the term Shangri-la, what comes to mind? A beautiful spot on a remote island with your every need taken care of? Or, for you Goodreaders, a library with 30,000 books? How about all the time you need to do anything you want with no deadlines or pressure. Shangri-la is where the passengers ended up, though not on a sunny island, but in the Himalayas.

It wasn't until I finished the story and read the Afterword that I realized that this book was written by the same guy who wrote Goodbye, Mr. Chips, another story I had pretty much put out of my mind. Much, I think, like I expect to happen with this one. The last time I loved a book as much as I loved this one was when I read Dune. Even though Dune is considered one of the masterworks of science fiction, I'm not really a sci-fi kind of girl, per se, I just love places that are so well-imagined by the author that you can't believe they're not real SOMEWHERE. Lost Horizon presents Shangri-La as such a place. When his plane crashes high in the Himalayas, Conway and the other survivors are found by a mysterious guide and led to a breathtaking discovery: the hidden valley of Shangri-La. Conway survived the trench warfare of WWI. This strongly affected his emotions. He was exhausted and felt older than he really was. He is strongly attracted to life at Shangri-La because the monks understood him.But, again, for all of its many and glaring flaws, it's...sortof fun. I mean, for one thing Hilton is inventing Shangri-La here, and that's pretty cool.

It's a somewhat challenging book to review, and even to classify. With regard to the latter point, I finally settled on "science fiction" for its genre, though it's very unlike most American SF from that era. (Nor does it fit into the "lost race" tradition popular on both sides of the Atlantic before and between the World Wars.) But it does have a central speculative element to its plot: the idea of long extension of human life (though not actual immortality, nor anything like it) by purely natural means. This element is squarely in the "soft" SF tradition (more characteristic of the British than the American genre), a literary conceit employed to set up and serve the human social and philosophical questions the author wants to explore. (It isn't based on any serious study of the actual causes of aging, nor on extrapolation from any known technique or effect.) The conceit: a plane crashes and the motley crew of survivors (two British officials, and American, and a missionary) are left to fend for themselves. When a traveling party arrives from a neighboring lamasa, the true adventure begins. Hilton weaves themes of "East" versus "West," apocalypse and utopia, and soteriology into his yarn while begging the question: is it the lunacy of humans or the will of God that "creates" our sense of existential crisis...or is it the lunacy of humans and God? Perhaps phrased another way: the line between creative genius and madman is blurred indeed. In fact the author of this book, James Hilton, created the fictional phrase Shangri-la for this story. Lost horizon was the first of 2 books published in 1933 and 1934 that lifted Hilton into a successful career in writing. The second book was Goodbye, Mr. Chips. An Englishman himself, he wrote mostly stories about the times between the 2 World Wars. His creative talent paints pictures of the characters and the scenery where they blend together seamlessly. The storyline brings the reader along as part of this wonderful story. It's a cute story, but just like Goodbye, Mr. Chips was a cute story. By "cute" I mean sort of annoying. Hilton was an average writer who wanted to make his readers feel good, which was important for the 30s, right? All that economic and psychological depression, that lull between two great wars. I mean, sad times all around. So why not write a short novel about a really great place that may be magic or may just be run by some nut?So, okay, here's Shangri-La. We all know the name, but this is where it started. And that's fine. Shangri-La is this utopian society-place in the Himalayan area, where the inhabitants are almost immortal. It's supposed to be this perfect society essentially created out of moderation, which is bogus, right, because moderation is boring and, c'mon, haven't we all agreed that nearly immortal longevity is a real drag?