Portal:Literature/Did you know/Week 34

... that Shangri-La, the name chosen by F.D. Roosevelt for what is today known as Camp David, takes its name from the 1933 Utopian novel Lost Horizon by James Hilton?

... that Rupert Brooke (pictured), author of the sonnet "The Soldier" (1915), died of pneumonia in the Aegean Sea on his way to the Battle of Gallipoli, and that he was buried in the Greek island of Skyros?

... that, amongst others, actors Kinya Aikawa, Bruno Cremer, Gino Cervi, Rupert Davies, Jean Gabin, Michael Gambon, Richard Harris, Charles Laughton, Pierre Renoir, Jean Richard, and Heinz Rühmann have all portrayed Georges Simenon's Commissaire Jules Maigret?

... that Ravelstein (2000) is Saul Bellow's final novel, and that the author was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976?

... that I promessi sposi, a historical novel by Alessandro Manzoni first published in 1827, is considered the most famous and widely read novel of the Italian language?

... that during performances of The Rocky Horror Show audience participation is invited &mdash; that the audience are encouraged to dress up as the characters, to shout call-backs at the stage ("arsehole", "slut", etc.), and to throw props onto the stage?

... that the current governor of Lower Austria, Erwin Pröll, once stated in an interview that the only book he had ever finished reading was Karl May's 1890 novel Der Schatz im Silbersee (The Treasure of Silver Lake)?