![]() In a later audience, the High Lama reveals that he is finally dying, and that he wants Conway to lead the lamasery. Conway guesses correctly that the High Lama is Perrault, now 250 years old. Once they have done so, their aging slows if they then leave the valley, they age quickly and die. The lamasery has since then been joined by others who have found their way into the valley. He learns that the lamasery was constructed in its present form by a Catholic monk named Perrault from Luxembourg, in the early eighteenth century. Conway is given an audience with the High Lama, an unheard-of honor. Mallinson falls in love with her, as does Conway, though more languidly. She does not speak English, but plays the harpsichord. The others eventually decide they are content to stay: Miss Brinklow because she wants to teach the people a sense of sin Barnard because he is really Chalmers Bryant (wanted by the police for stock fraud) and because he is keen to develop the gold mines in the valley and Conway because the contemplative scholarly life suits him.Ī seemingly young Manchu woman, Lo-Tsen, is another postulant at the lamasery. ![]() Mallinson is keen to hire porters and leave, but Chang politely puts him off. Towering above is Karakal, literally translated as "Blue Moon," a mountain more than 28,000 feet high. The lamasery has modern conveniences, like central heating, bathtubs from Akron, Ohio, a large library, a grand piano, a harpsichord, and food from the fertile valley below. The four are taken there by a party directed by Chang, a postulant at the lamasery who speaks English. The location is unclear, but Conway believes the plane has "progressed far beyond the western range of the Himalayas" towards the less known heights of the Kuen-Lun mountain range. After a crash landing, the pilot dies, but not before telling the four (in Chinese, which only Conway speaks) to seek shelter at the nearby lamasery of Shangri-La. The plane is hijacked and flown instead over the mountains to Tibet. In the aeroplane of the Maharajah of Chandrapore are: Conway, the British consul, aged 37 Mallinson, his young vice-consul an American, Barnard and a British missionary, Miss Brinklow. In May 1931, during the British Raj in India, the 80 white residents of Baskul are being evacuated to Peshawar due to revolution. Rutherford gives the neurologist his manuscript, which becomes the heart of the novel. ![]() Conway recovered his memory, told Rutherford his story (which Rutherford recorded in a manuscript), and then slipped away again. Later in the evening, Rutherford reveals to the neurologist that, after the disappearance, he discovered Conway in a French mission hospital in Chung-Kiang (probably Chongqing), China, suffering from amnesia. A chance remark by a passing airman brings up the topic of Hugh Conway, a British consul in Afghanistan, who disappeared under odd circumstances. This neurologist and a novelist friend, Rutherford, are given dinner at Tempelhof, Berlin, by their old school-friend Wyland, a secretary at the British embassy. ![]() The prologue and epilogue are narrated by a neurologist. Hugh Conway, a veteran member of the British diplomatic service, finds inner peace, love and a sense of purpose in Shangri-La, whose inhabitants enjoy unheard-of longevity.
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