This is a great book. It is a short read but provokes deep thought and questions about what we want of life and existence. It's very much rooted in the time it was written and, without any direct references, reflects the emotional, societal and physical damage that WWI created and that tipped reality on its axis. It is a sort of adventure story but, be warned, it's not pacey...it takes a while for both the characters and the reader to get to a point of understanding but its worth the wait. A very well written and charming tale.

İngiliz yazar James Hilton'u pek çok kimse tanımaz ama eski kuşaktan olanlar onun ''Elveda Mr.Jips'' adlı eserini okumuş yada filmini izlemiş olabilir.
Senaryosunu yazmış olduğu Mrs. Miniver ise....

https://edebiyatdanostalji.blogspot.c...

Lost Horizon gives birth to the Legendary utopia of Shangri-La. This was an incredible philosophical journey into the crisp Himalayan mountains. Deep and Thought Provoking this story is great for any one interested in religion and spirituality, or just books in general that really make you stop and think! A True Escapist Read into Paradise!

Wonderfully narrated,this book is best savored with a glass of port in front of a log fire.
Drift back in time to the days of a British Empire 'on which the sun never set'and follow our heroes into territory not dissimilar in its' mysterious isolation to the land where "She,who must be obeyed"-awaited Allan Quatermain.However,rather than discovering a beguiling and lovely Ayesha we are presented,instead, with a "small, pale, and wrinkled person" A High Lama about whom it could be said that"If there were such a thing as presence divorced from actuality, here it was, adorned with a classic dignity that was more an emanation than an attribute."We have arrived at the Tibetan Monastery of Shangri-La and will soon to discover a secret which offers us everything we might ever wish for-if we choose to remain forever...

After loving the BBC dramatization based on this book, I decided to read it afterwards. Really liked it and I didn't know that Frank Capra had made a movie version of this book, which was probably more reliable to story itself than the last Hollywood version.

The plane that launched a thousand derivatives...

Before there was the ABC juggernaut that is LOST, there was James Hilton's afternoon read Lost Horizon. This fantastical tale, billed as the first paperback, introduced four characters, and a world audience, to Shangri-La, a time capsule of knowledge and wisdom hidden in the crevasses of the Himalayas.

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.

The book clips along in eleven short chapters making it an easy read for your morning commute. You'll even find yourself asking "What Would Edward Said Do" in certain passages, but that's part of the fun in reading a book almost a hundred years old...You may even ask yourself (although quietly, if you're in public) to examine how much free will we truly have. Do we have a moral imperative to save society or to save ourselves?

Fans of LOST, Battlestar Galactica (the post-millennial version), and Testament(the graphic novel) will appreciate this mythic grandfather story. They may also be curious to know that Lost Horizon spawned both a book sequel, a movie, and a musical. Hopefully, ABC learned their musical lesson from Cop Rock.


n  religion, science fictionn
Orientalism

At the Tibetan lamasery, Shangri-La, the ageing process can be held back. I was probably the same age as Mallinson when first I read this; now I'm closer to Chang's age (young man to wise elder). No such luck here in Eastangi-La, then. As for my beautifully-designed paperback copy, now 72 years old, it's definitely showing signs of decrepitude (brittle spine, pigmentation yellowing).

Lost Horizon is a popular novel, a pot-boiler and ripping yarn. It's Hesse-lite, The Glass Bead Game with artificial sweeteners and little nutritional value. The main characters aren't just cardboard, they're recycled from the hardcovers of Victorian adventure tales - the urbane, sceptical war veteran, the zealous, school-ma'amish missionary, the corrupt American entrepreneur, the hot-headed, moralistic youth. And yet, and yet... The idea of Shangri-La continues to resonate, a cerebral utopia in a middlebrow book, paradise in the form of enlightened dictatorship. Millions will know its name yet will have neither read the book nor seen the film. Generations named their bungalows after it. Why?

Has Lost Horizon found the secret to eternal youth? Not really. The prose is as stiff as that cast of stereotypes and would already have been conservative at the time of publishing (1933 - yes, that significant year and the coming conflict is foreshadowed). But there remains something seductive about the idea, something endlessly elegiac about Conway leaving paradise and trying to find his way back. You feel you've been enlightened without being stretched at all. Its message is one for modern times - the value of learning, culture, moderation and slowness. In our dumbed-down, Yahoo-filled world, what reasonable person could argue with that?

A bookmark on my pillow each evening while on a recent holiday was my inspiration for reading this classic.

James Hilton's Lost Horizon is a book from 1933 that has become a classic, in part because it was made into a movie that has also become a classic. The idea of Shangri-La, a magical place high up in the clouds of a Tibetan mountain range is the setting for a book that one moment is a realistic adventure story and the next fantasy fiction. It ends with a prediction of "Dark Ages" to come. The book starts out with four people sharing a flight on a plane evacuating them from a war zone. They are the only passengers and start getting to know each other on the long flight, expecting not to see each other after they land. The flight ends in a plane crash with the pilot telling them there is a lamasery nearby and then dying. A Chinese man and his entourage meets the plane at the crash site and takes them back to the lamasery. The four passengers: Hugh Conway, a counselor official; Henry Barnard, an American; Charles Mallinson, a counsel; and Roberta Brinklow, a missionary, gratefully accept his hospitality. Chang, the Chinese man, explains he is only a postulant, as is Lo-Tsen, a young woman who is a talented musician. Conway is soon invited to meet the High Lama. He explains some secrets about Shangri-La: the inhabitants age very slowly; lead long lives; and can't leave without getting old. The guests are welcome to stay, but if they choose to leave it will be difficult to make arrangements. For various reasons, three of the four choose to stay. Mallinson insists on leaving and arranges for Lo-Tsen to go with him. Part of Conway's reason for staying was his friendship with Lo-Tsen. The three of them end up leaving together. Things do not turn out as planned. Hilton shares the various motives with the reader. He also presents some of the beliefs shared by the lamas. His book has come to be considered an anti-war novel.

Lost Horizon, originally published in 1933, starts with a first person narrating a Prologue and ends with an Epilogue, which frame the story. I am not sure why this storytelling device works so well to engage my interest, but I find that I am almost always hooked. The setup seems to increase my interest in the main tale which follows, and satisfyingly concludes at the end.

This story is about a British diplomat, disillusioned by the Great War, who, along with three other passengers, board a plane that is high-jacked. The plane crash lands somewhere in the mountains of western Tibet and the passengers are brought to a hidden paradise. That is all I will say of the story because it is best read in Hilton’s full length novel. The book has a mix of characters who contrast with each other in temperament, but it is the main character, Conway, who is most carefully drawn. In the end, we don’t know exactly what happened to him, but the book gives us hope that he achieves his ultimate mission. The story seems so plausible to anyone with imagination that the reader is left with the question, could such a place really exist? Today, we associate the name “Shangri-La” with the idea of paradise — such was the influence of this book.

I remember being enchanted by Frank Capra’s black and white 1937 film which I watched on television in the 1950s or 1960s as a child, although I didn’t remember much of the story. After reading the book, it would be a delight to see the film again and I hope it has been saved or restored. I will look into getting a DVD of it.

My paperback, published by Harper, has an essay at the end which pointed out the book’s role in the history of mass marketing of paperbacks, with the introduction of Pocket Books. (Remember the kangaroo?) We take for granted the availability of books, but prior to the paperback release of Lost Horizon in 1939, books were expensive and not many were owned by average people, at least, in the United States. The paperback book put a luxury item in the hands of everyday people. It was a revolutionary thing to do.

Five stars — this is any easy, spell-binding story, as fascinating as a fairy tale.

I'm sure most people are familiar with the basic story of Lost Horizon, and of course everyone knows the concept of "Shangri-La," but I'm not sure how many people have actually read the book. I certainly hadn't, but was surprised that it still holds up fairly well, (and is far better than either the original 1937 film version of the execrable 1973 remake as a musical - although the latter did have a very nice theme song by the under-appreciated Shawn Phillips).

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.

The hero of the book is a scarred veteran of "the War" (i.e., World War I), but the true message of the book as related by the High Lama involves preparing for the next war, not revisiting the last. According to the Lama, the world is soon to face an even worse disaster, one which could throw the entire planet into a new Dark Ages, and only isolated pockets of civilization and culture such as Shangri-La could possibly help the world to recover. At the time of its writing, Hitler was just rising to power in Germany, and the Japanese had already bombed Shanghai in the "January 28 Incident" of 1932 that presaged not only the Marco Polo Bridge and Rape of Nanking in 1937 but ultimately the entire war in the Pacific as well.

Well, we more-or-less survived that war; but reading the book today I find the Lama's warning perhaps even more relevant to today's world - standing once again on the brink of nuclear conflict; facing (but largely failing to address) a looming environmental catastrophe; terrorism, disease, Trump...maybe it really is time to head up into the hills and look for a cone-shaped mountain...

NOTE ON THE AUTHOR: James Hilton wrote over 20 novels, but is really only remembered for Lost Horizon and Good-bye Mr. Chips, which he wrote back to back. As a long-time fan of Tibet and Central Asia in general, I give kudos to Hilton for dropping in without further explanation references to Aurel Stein and Sven Hedin, the Karakoram and the Kunlun mountains, and quotes from Gordon about the Mahdi. Should probably credit the British reading public as well for (I assume) understanding such references - doubt many Americans today would recognize these names, much less be able to place this story on a map. Oh, and one final note - while this book is often called "the world's first paperback" (it even says so on the cover of this edition), it was not; paperback books had been around since the mid-1800s. However, is was the first "mass market paperback," reprinted in 1939 as Pocket Book #1.

There's a moment in Frank Capra's adaptation of this story, in which Ronald Colman, playing the lead character, looks back at the paradise he is leaving. The expression is his face is cinematic genius and, frankly, is better, by itself, than this entire book. That said, the book is much better than the movie.

Lean storytelling lends itself to a lack of depth in the plot and the development of the supporting characters. But, all in all, this is a splendid story, brilliant in its juxtaposition of idealism and cynicism, hope and disillusionment. The main character is a delightfully well-rounded person, and the closing chapters are just about perfect.