Shangri-La It may be used in this context alongside other mythical and famous examples of somewhat similar metaphors such as El Dorado, The Fountain of Youth, and The Holy Grail. Shangri-La Shangri-La is a fictional place described in the 1933 novel "Lost Horizon" by British author James Hilton. Hilton describes Shangri-La as a mystical, harmonious valley, gently guided from a lamasery, enclosed in the western end of the Kunlun Mountains. Shangri-La has become synonymous with any earthly paradise, particularly a mythical Himalayan utopia – a permanently happy land, isolated from the world. In the novel, the people who live at Shangri-La
S. (Dorst novel) S. (Dorst novel) S. is a 2013 novel written by Doug Dorst and conceived by J. J. Abrams. The novel is unusual in its format, presented as a story within a story. It is composed of the novel "Ship of Theseus" by a fictional author, and hand-written notes filling the book's margins as a dialogue between two college students hoping to uncover the author's mysterious identity and the novel's secret plus loose supplementary materials tucked in between pages. "S." has been called "part work of art, literary experiment, and love letter to the physical expression of books." "S." is presented