Fiction Story Briefs

Great novels are often connected-to (or based-on) real-life events. It's fun to search-for (and uncover) those connections. This Collection features fictional stories with real-life tie-ins.

Scholars of Irish Literature believe that Oliver St. John Gogarty (1878-1957) was the inspiration for Buck Mulligan in "Ulysses," by James Joyce.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn's novel about life as a prisoner in a Stalinist forced-labor camp, in Siberia's GULAG, is based onhis own experience.

The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice depicts a tragic romance.

In "The Hunger Games," people believe that District 13 (once a part of Panem) no longer exists. It was destroyed, they think, by the Capitol. Then...K...

The myth of Perseus, the son of Zeus

Once a beautiful maiden, Medusa became a monster so frightening that all who looked on her turned to stone.

A demigod, Perseus could accomplish incredible feats that no mortal ever could.

Stieg Larsson modeled Lisbeth Salander, in part, on Pippi Longstocking, a character created by Astrid Lindgren.

Dostoevsky gives us clues where Raskolnikov lives, but not until his wife provided more information (after the author's death) can we be more certain ...

Meet Robert Louis Stevenson, a writer who lived just 44 years. Although he died in 1894, some of his novels have never been out of print.

According to British ballads, and the "Percy Folio," Robin Hood (sometimes called Robin Longstride or Robin of Locksley) died a treacherous death. It ...

Making their way through the various parts of the Inferno, Dante and Virgil come to the "Ninth Circle of Hell."  There they see a gigantic figure...

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