Identify fictional book/story: where to ask?

Question

Science Fiction and Fantasy has a highly active story-identification tag but where should I ask for identification of fictional stories that are of neither science-fiction nor fantasy genre?

Answer 1

Perhaps the proposed Literature site will allow general story-identification requests.

If your story belongs to that domain, Mythology allows for identification requests. Apart from that, I do not think there is any existing site that would suit your needs.

Answer 2

The Literature Stack Exchange proposal mentioned in Wrzlprmft's answer has been in public beta since early 2017 and does indeed accept story identification questions. These questions should be tagged identification-request and must fulfil a number of criteria, which are described in the tag wiki:

A list of details one should consider adding to their question includes, but is not limited to:

• When did you read the story, and how old was it?

  Did you read it 10 years ago? Last summer? "When I was in high school" is not descriptive. Try to provide a year range instead. Was it an old crumbling book or a fresh one? Did you see it in a magazine from the 1980s or on a website yesterday?

• Medium and appearance

  What did the cover look like? Was it a thick book? A magazine? Short story collection? Novel? Maybe printed in a textbook? Was it an online story?

• What language did you read it in, and was it translated?

  What language did you read the book in? This helps to narrow down the possibilities. In case you read a translation, you should also try to provide the original language the book was written in - this will significantly narrow down the search area.

• Where did you read this story?

  Public library? Airport book shop? USA? Italy? Any of these will help.

• Anything else

  Every little detail will help - do not omit anything just because you think it is insignificant. Even details that you are unsure of can be included, just with a disclaimer that you are unsure about them.