Lost Horizon: A Novel by James Hilton
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Book Reviews of Lost Horizon: A Novel
Book Review: Soul food
Summary: 5 Stars
Not only a grand read, beautifully written, but a thought-provoking story on passion, love, and the meaning of life. Interesting discourse on the contemplative life vs. one that joins body and soul in the real world. Reminds me of "Children of Men" by P.D. James in its exploration of mankind's future and the consideration of what constitutes a life well and fully lived.Book Review: Awesome Read...Book condition new
Summary: 5 Stars
Recomend this book a anyone who enjoys a good adventure... will keep you guessing...a true classic of the pre-WWII era.....book stands head and shoulders over the movie....If you intend to watch the movie do yourself a favor, read the book first.Book Review: Mysterious and thought provoking. My kind of book!
Summary: 5 Stars
I loved this book. The writing was superb and had a wonderful, mysterious quality about it. I am recommending this book to my friends.Book Review: Towards A Life-Philosophy of Moderation (Which Is Only Moderately True)
Summary: 4 Stars
James Hilton's Lost Horizon, first published in 1933, is the enchanting, though cerebral, short novel that gave birth to the utopia of Shangri-La, a paradise set in a Christian-Buddhist monastery and largely self-sufficient village in the isolated high mountains of Tibet. Told as a captivating story within a story, the drama revolves around a cluster of enticing mysteries: Why are protagonist Hugh Conway and the other foreigners being flown by a seemingly mad pilot high above the remote Kuen-Lun mountains of China? Is Conway's story of his two-month stay in Shangri-La believable?; Does this almost timeless utopia, where people live in equanimity and age ever so slowly, actually exist?; Does Conway find his way back to Shangri-La to take charge following the death of the 250-year-old High Lama?
The basic storyline, including Conway's love for a youthful Tibetan girl he meets in Shangri-La, is provocative enough to have served more than once as material for an entertaining Hollywood movie, but, in my opinion, the greater value of the work lies in the author's articulation of an emotionally appealing and intellectually intriguing life-philosophy. Conway is a British consul whose mild personality and muted career ambition lead to his assignments in far-away places outside the mainstream of power and politics. As such, he is the perfect newcomer to Shangri-La, where people are moderately hard-working and honest, where different ethical systems and religions are condoned as being "moderately true," and, above all, where the lamas who run Shangri-La "are only moderately certain" of their own beliefs! After entering Shangri-La, often more by chance than choice, lamas-in-training find that their youthful desires gradually recede, to be replaced by a deeper wisdom. Over many decades of living in Shangri-La, significant events from their past lives come into sharper focus to serve as reference points for refined scholarly pursuits and purposeful contemplation about the future.
As voiced through the High Lama's prognostication of a storm that "will rage till every flower of culture is trampled, and all human beings are leveled in a vast chaos," Hilton warned in the 1930s, the decade leading up to World War II and the development of nuclear weapons, about the destructive path our conflict-prone society was on. Along with his warning, however, Hilton optimistically professes faith in "a new world stirring in the ruins," with Shangri-La "preserved as by miracle for a new Renaissance." Assuming this forecast to be moderately true, let's hope that Conway really has returned to Shangri-La, even though the rest of us may never get there!
Book Review: A Classic is a Classic...
Summary: 4 Stars
I first read LOST HORIZON many years ago, after I'd seen the film (which, frankly, rather ruins the tale for me, but not enough to destroy the pleasure in reading it). When on a trip to China, staying in the Xian Shangri-La Hotel and having run out of my own books, I picked up their copy (a very nice little hard-cover available for sale at the Horizon Club).
It was a joy to be transported back in time... when the British Empire was slowly collapsing and world-weary consul, Conrad, is escaping a revolution with 3 others (an American, a missionary and a junior diplomat) when their plane is mysteriously hi-jacked. They find themselves crash-landing with a soon-deceased pilot somewhere in the Himalayas and are rescued by a party of Tibetans carrying an aged Chinese man. He leads them to Shangri-La--a lammasery beneath a high moutain, above a particularly lush, cultivated valley.
Shangri-La has become a sort of archetype for hidden/lost utopian societies. The echoes of this book are discernible in many latter works. But here is the original (or one of the originals, since Shangri-La itself is naturally based on previous ideas). Hilton's work is spare, but still magical, depicting a time of turmoil, just before the death and destruction of the Second World War. Conrad, the hero who is not a hero, has lived through WWI and it has both taken something from him... and given him something--something that seems to culminate in his finding peace and wisdom and himself at Shangri-La. But can modern man truly find peace? Or will the world and its madness be a call that's too strong to ignore?
Visit Shangri-La and see for yourself!