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
Paradise (novel) Paradise (novel) Paradise is a 1997 novel by Toni Morrison, and her first novel since winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. According to the author, it completes a "trilogy" that begins with "Beloved" (1987) and includes "Jazz" (1992). The book was chosen as an Oprah's Book Club selection for January 1998. Morrison wanted to call the novel War but was overridden by her editor. The book is structured into nine sections. The first is named "Ruby" after the town on which the book centers. The rest are named for women implicated variously in the life of the town