Lost Horizon 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 Shangri-La, a fictional utopian lamasery located high in the mountains of Tibet. Hugh Conway, a veteran member of the British diplomatic service, finds inner peace, love and a sense of purpose in Shangri-La, whose inhabitants enjoy unheard-of longevity. The prologue and epilogue are narrated by a neurologist. This neurologist and a novelist friend, Rutherford, are given dinner at Tempelhof, Berlin, by their
Oh What a Paradise It Seems themes, including love, lust, life in suburbia, and a sense of displacement. Writing in the "New York Times", John Leonard called the novella "perfect Cheever; it is perfect, period." John Updike, a friend of Cheever, preferred it to Cheever's novel "Falconer", and remarked on the theme of ice skating, which he called his "Wordsworthian hike" and his "connection with elemental purity and the awesome depths above and below". Oh What a Paradise It Seems Oh What a Paradise It Seems is a 1982 novella by John Cheever. It is Cheever's last work of fiction, published shortly before his death from