Portal:Literature/Did you know/Week 42

... that in August 2006 Nobel Prize laureate Günter Grass (pictured) admitted, 62 years after the fact, to having been a member of the Waffen-SS?

... that The Quare Fellow, a 1954 play by Brendan Behan (Breandán Ó Beacháin) about prison life in 1950s Ireland, was turned into a black-and-white film in 1962 starring Patrick McGoohan as a death-row prison guard with a growing empathy with two condemned prisoners?

... that Radetzkymarsch (Radetzky March) is a family saga by Joseph Roth first published in 1932 about the downfall of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, and that the title of the novel refers to Johann Strauß's "Radetzky March"?

... that a bodice ripper is a genre of romantic fiction, often historical fiction, featuring unrestrained romantic passion and a heroine who initially dislikes and actively resists the hero's seduction, only ultimately to be overcome by desire?

... that "The devil take her!" is the last line of Sir John Suckling's poem "Why So Pale and Wan, Fond Lover?"?

... that the 1982 stage play Die Antrittsrede der amerikanischen Päpstin (El Discurso inaugural de la Papisa americana) by Esther Vilar is set in the year 2022, where Pope Joan II holds her inaugural address sponsored by big money and interrupted by commercial breaks?

... that "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" and "It Had to Be Murder" are just three of the many short stories which have been adapted into feature-length films?