Shambhala within the Soviet intelligence service, as well as rival efforts of the Soviet Foreign Commissariat that sent its own expedition to Tibet in 1924. French Buddhist Alexandra David-Néel associated Shambhala with Balkh in present-day Afghanistan, also offering the Persian "Sham-i-Bala", "elevated candle" as an etymology of its name. In a similar vein, the Gurdjieffian J. G. Bennett published speculation that Shambalha was "Shams-i-Balkh", a Bactrian sun temple. Shambhala may have been the inspiration for Shangri-La, a paradise on Earth hidden in a Tibetan valley, which features in the 1933 novel "Lost Horizon" by British author James Hilton. Shambhala In Hinduism
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