Shangri-La Shangri-La Shangri-La is a fictional place described in the 1933 novel "Lost Horizon" by British author James Hilton. Hilton describes Shangri-La as a mystical, harmonious valley, gently guided from a lamasery, enclosed in the western end of the Kunlun Mountains. Shangri-La has become synonymous with any earthly paradise, particularly a mythical Himalayan utopia – a permanently happy land, isolated from the world. In the novel, the people who live at Shangri-La are almost immortal, living hundreds of years beyond the normal lifespan and only very slowly aging in appearance. The name also evokes the imagery of the exoticism of the
Lost Horizon and June 2016 on BBC Radio 4 Extra. An earlier recording of the serialised book was transmitted by the BBC Home Service in the early 1960s (featuring Gabriel Woolfe playing the part of Conway.) "Lost Horizon" is currently available in paperback format and is now published by Summersdale Publishers Ltd , in the UK and by Harper Perennial, in the United States. Lost Horizon Lost Horizon is a 1933 novel by English writer James Hilton. The book was turned into a movie, also called "Lost Horizon", in 1937 by director Frank Capra. It is best remembered as the origin of