The monastery has sent out a rescue party and the four travellers arrive in safety at Shangri-La and are astonished to find civilized amenities, warmth, and enlightened conversation. They are stranded in the middle of an incredibly remote mountain range, without any proper mountaineering equipment, and with no idea why the pilot brought them to this area.Ĭhapter Three begins the story of Shangri-La. After a landing that wrecks the plane, the four travellers discover that the pilot is unconscious. Chapter Two begins with that night, when the plane suddenly begins to descend. The pilot makes one successful landing in a remote region, and some tribesmen refuel the plane. Queries are answered with the gesture of a revolver, and the group of four is getting anxious.

While in flight, they notice that their pilot is not who they were expecting later, they notice that the airplane is on a radically different route than it was supposed to take.

Conway is accompanied by his diplomatic subordinate, a young man named Mallinson, and the two other travellers are Miss Brinklow, a missionary, and an American named Barnard. As he gradually recovered his memory, he told his story to a man named Rutherford, and Rutherford passes along this manuscript to his friend with the warning that it will be hard to believe.Ĭhapter One starts with Conway and three other people fleeing a dangerous area of India. No one heard from him for a while, and then he turned up as an amnesiac at a hospital somewhere in China. Conway was a Renaissance man at Oxford, smart, athletic, and artistic, but for some reason, he accepted a post in India. The prologue gives the reader a framing story: some British characters are discussing a man named Conway and how he mysteriously disappeared for a few years. Before that point, Hilton includes a prologue and two lengthy chapters of set-up. The story of Lost Horizon is simple: a group of travellers are stranded in the Himalayas and they encounter a remote monastery named Shangri-La and the wonderful people who live there. The book also makes a big impression at first reading, especially for younger readers (which is when I first read it, many years ago now), who are captivated by the atmosphere of mystery and mysticism. James Hilton wrote Lost Horizon in 1933, and it was an immediate success, selling millions of copies, influencing President Roosevelt to name what's now Camp David Shangri-La, and Frank Capra, a hot director after an Oscar sweep with It Happened One Night in 1934, made a movie of Lost Horizon in 1937.

Lost Horizon, James Hilton, Pocket, 1970, 231 pp.

Book lost horizon by james hilton