Abstract
ABSTRACT Since the publication of James Hilton’s Lost Horizon (1933), Shangri-La has become a household term, applied to any peaceful idyll or retreat from the modern world. In the academic community, there is a growing consensus that Shangri-La is a purely unreal, imaginary place in the novel of a utopian genre. Nevertheless, how Shangri-La emerged and exists remains a mystery. Therefore, this essay explores how Hilton’s Shangri-La came into being in two forms: an imagined paradise in the East with exotic chinoiserie, and the cultural Other to the West, which is governed by imperialism in the western imagination in the wake of global expansion and colonization. The literary strategies employed by James Hilton in Lost Horizon make Shangri-La an incarnation that epitomizes the imperial ambitions following the demise of the British Empire, with its concomitant economic, intellectual and cultural decline.
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