James Hilton (novelist) picked "Lost Horizon" as its first title in 1939. For that reason, the novel is frequently called the book that began the "paperback revolution." Hilton is said to have been inspired to write "Lost Horizon", and to invent "Shangri-La" by reading the "National Geographic Magazine" articles of Joseph Rock, an Austrian-American botanist and ethnologist exploring the southwestern Chinese provinces and Tibetan borderlands. Still living in Britain at the time, Hilton was perhaps influenced by the Tibetan travel articles of early travellers in Tibet whose writings were found in the British Library. Christian Zeeman, the Danish father of the mathematician Christopher
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