Peter Kelder’s 1939 account, The Eye of Revelation, was released six years after Lost Horizon. Shangri-La signified a perfect escape from the troubles of the outside world. Tibet was the ideal setting for Hilton’s novel as the country was still largely unmapped, insular, forbidden to foreigners, and full of untold mysteries. Published in 1933, Lost Horizon struck a chord when Western civilization seemed hell-bent on destruction, and war was in the air. This book has a lost-in-a-dream-like quality to it. Here the ravages of time and history are held back, and people live to extraordinary ages. Hilton’s lost paradise on earth, “Shangri-La,” lies in a beautiful Tibetan valley, cut off from the rest of the world, where people live in harmony with nature.
Interestingly the main characters featured in both books are ex-British Army officers who had worked in the diplomatic corps. Is there a link between the famous novel Lost Horizon written by James Hilton, and The Eye of Revelation by Peter Kelder?Īt the heart of both books is the discovery of some magical ‘fountain of youth’ that reverses aging – and the places where these secrets were held were in remote Tibetan monasteries.
0 kommentar(er)
