48 pages • 1 hour read
James HiltonLost Horizon
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1933A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Historical Context: The Interwar Period
The interwar period is the period between the end of World War I in 1918 and the beginning of the second in 1939. Many social and technological developments impacted the art and culture of this period, including new, more destructive weapons; the economic struggles of the Great Depression; and growing conflicts between European nations. With the Russian Revolution of 1917 and fascist movements in Italy, Spain, and Germany, the stage was being set for a clash between ideologies. The devastation of World War I was still fresh in the European mind, and soldiers from WWI were struggling with new conditions and disorders that had never been documented before, such as shellshock, which is now more commonly known as PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder.
The interwar period can be divided into two smaller periods of contrasting prosperity, with the Roaring Twenties being a period of activity, pleasure, and prosperity, while the Great Depression of the 1930s involved a global economic crisis. Lost Horizon takes place shortly after the stock market crash of 1929 dashed the exuberant hopes of the 1920s, and the novel rejects both economic and ideological excesses in favor of “moderation.” As a utopian novel, Hilton is proposing a method of living that is ideal and a society that is paradisical. Noting the excesses of the Roaring Twenties, Hilton includes at Shangri-La a mild narcotic, some sexual freedom, and art and music that show restraint. At the same time, responding to the developing Great Depression, Hilton includes massive stores of wealth at Shangri-La to safeguard against economic downturns, and he responds to fascism by including the practice of only moderate law enforcement and moderate obedience of laws. The novel is rooted in the issues and debates of the interwar period, and it includes Hilton’s prediction of the coming second World War, raising questions about how best to live in an increasingly chaotic world.
Genre Context: Utopian and Travel Novels
Travel literature is a broad genre that encompasses works that discuss either actual or fictional travels, often involving a journey to a foreign land. With the advent of the British Empire, travel literature began to encompass journeys to British colonies, including India, China, the Middle East, Africa, and the Caribbean, often informed by and perpetuating colonial racism while also appreciating the art, culture, and atmosphere of colonized territories and peoples through a Eurocentric lens. Though Hilton did not travel to Tibet, he based his understanding of the Tibetan setting of Lost Horizon on travel literature and reports he encountered in England, and the novel itself follows a traditional adventure/travel narrative of a difficult journey to a foreign land.
Combining travel literature with the utopian society of the Karakal valley, Lost Horizon takes the form of a mock travelogue—a technique also found in 18th-century satirical novels like Samuel Butler’s Erewhon and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. Hilton combines imperialist assumptions about the mystical wisdom of Asia with Eurocentric perceptions of the superiority of European art and culture to create Shangri-La. Utopian literature, rooted in such works as Plato’s Republic and Thomas More’s Utopia, proposes a society or culture that is ideal or perfect in some way, often as a vantage point from which to critique existing society. In Lost Horizon, for example, Hilton uses the peaceful, “moderate” society of Shangri-La to shed light on the destructive ambition threatening to plunge Europe into another world war.
