The four are taken there by a party directed by Chang, a postulant at the lamasery who speaks English. The location is unclear, but Conway believes the plane has 'progressed far beyond the western range of the Himalayas' towards the less known heights of the Kuen-Lun mountain range. After a crash landing, the pilot dies, but not before telling the four (in Chinese, which only Conway speaks) to seek shelter at the nearby lamasery of Shangri-La. The plane is hijacked and flown instead over the mountains to Tibet. In the aeroplane of the Maharajah of Chandrapore are: Conway, the British consul, aged 37 Mallinson, his young vice-consul an American, Barnard and a British missionary, Miss Brinklow. In May 1931, during the British Raj in India, the 80 white residents of Baskul are being evacuated to Peshawar due to revolution. Rutherford gives the neurologist his manuscript, which becomes the heart of the novel. Conway recovered his memory, told Rutherford his story (which Rutherford recorded in a manuscript), and then slipped away again. Later in the evening, Rutherford reveals to the neurologist that, after the disappearance, he discovered Conway in a French mission hospital in Chung-Kiang (probably Chongqing), China, suffering from amnesia. A chance remark by a passing airman brings up the topic of Hugh Conway, a British consul in Afghanistan, who disappeared under odd circumstances. This neurologist and a novelist friend, Rutherford, are given dinner at Tempelhof, Berlin, by their old school-friend Wyland, a secretary at the British embassy. The prologue and epilogue are narrated by a neurologist.

It is best remembered as the origin of Shangri-La, a fictional utopian lamasery located high in the mountains of Tibet. The book was turned into a film, also called Lost Horizon, in 1937 by director Frank Capra and a lavish musical remake in 1973 by producer Ross Hunter with music by Burt Bacharach.

Lost Horizon is a 1933 novel by English writer James Hilton. Print (hardback & paperback), Kindle eBook, audiobook

James hilton's 1933 novel lost horizon