Lost Horizon

Hilton's premise strikes a deep chord in today's 'everything is relative' society. His utopia retains all its charm and, in his creation of Shangri-La, he added something permanently to the language

Guardian

The word [Shangri-La] has become part of the English language, the name of retirement bungalows from Devon to Durban; of hotels and boarding houses promising rest and seclusion in every continent

Guardian

Lost Horizon introduced the world to a Tibetan paradise where people live extraordinarily long lives of peace, harmony and wisdom. Expertly plotted and deftly written, Hilton's book suggests mysteries without spelling them out - and leaves us wanting more

New York Times

James Hilton invented the name Shangri-La for a paradise on earth in a book that captured the imagination of a public dealing with financial hardships and the threat of Nazism

Observer

More than 60 years after James Hilton wrote Lost Horizon, launching one of the century's most enduring literary mysteries, the search for paradise on earth has led to the mountains of south-west China… Hilton intended it as a pacifist parable; Hollywood turned it into a romantic blockbuster

Guardian

Hilton (1900-1954) is part of the vast company of largely forgotten good authors... He produced a small handful of excellent popular novels - Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Random Harvest - but nothing more enduring than the one that gave us Shangri-La: Lost Horizon

Denver Post

The important thing to note about this very fine novel - the tale of an adventure in Tibet - is that it is unusual and the product of a first-class mind...a wildly exciting story, nightmare, fantasy, or what you will

Daily Express

A charm both of poetry and of strangeness... It is absorbing, a book one will re-read

Guardian