Shangri-La and history in 1930s England.

This paper addresses the questions of whether, why, and how, popular literary culture was a transmitter of ideas about the East (and particularly Buddhism) after the demise of Theosophy in the 1930s, taking James Hilton's Lost Horizon (1933) as a test case. It shows how the novel can be understood historically as a response to the sense of crisis of Western modernity, and as a refashioning of familiar Orientalist material in order to address this crisis. It analyses some of the complex ways in which East-West cultural interactions began to work in the twentieth century, and what kind of ideological interests were involved in the process.

Previously published in Buddhist Studies Review. (ISSN: 0265-2897); Vol 24 no 1.; 2007.