Books & Authors GK Questions with Answers

Manimekalai, one of the five great epics of Tamil literature, was written by Sithalai Sathanar, a grain merchant of Madurai, in the post-Sangam period.

The line comes from Gandhi's writings on health, where he treats the body as a servant of the spirit. Gandhi wrote widely on diet, fasting, nature cure and self-control, most famously in his little book on health.

She wrote Stri Purush Tulana, A Comparison between Women and Men, in Marathi in 1882. Tarabai Shinde was born in Buldhana in Berar and was associated with Jyotirao Phule's Satyashodhak Samaj.

The line comes from her famous Hindi poem Jhansi Ki Rani, which celebrates Rani Lakshmibai's fight in the Revolt of 1857.

Four Stars of Destiny is the autobiography of General M. M. Naravane, who served as India's Chief of the Army Staff.

The Marathi poet wrote Maze Vidyapeeth (My University), drawing on his own life among the mill workers and the poor of Bombay.

Why Bharat Matters, published in 2024, was written by S. Jaishankar, who wrote it while serving as India's External Affairs Minister.

Gulbadan Begum, a daughter of Babur, wrote the Humayun Nama, an account of the life of her half-brother Humayun. Gulbadan Begum wrote the book in Persian at the request of her nephew Akbar, who wanted material for the official history of his reign, the Akbarnama of Abul Fazl.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the Geneva-born philosopher, published The Social Contract (Du contrat social) in 1762.

The English naturalist published this book in London on 24 November 1859, setting out his theory of evolution by natural selection.

Al-Biruni, a scholar from Khwarizm in Central Asia, came to India in the train of Mahmud of Ghazni in the early eleventh century.

The French writer Dominique Lapierre wrote The City of Joy, published in 1985.

Among the four thinkers listed, Machiavelli is the one who wrote a work called The Art of War (Dell'arte della guerra), published in Florence in 1521.

Every book in the list is paired with its real author. Dayabhaga, written by Jimutavahana in Bengal in the twelfth century, is a work on Hindu law of inheritance; under it a son gets a share in family property only after the father's death.

Kalila wa Dimna is the Arabic version of the Panchatantra, named after two jackals, Karataka and Damanaka, who appear in its first book.

The Panchatantra teaches practical wisdom (niti) through animal fables, each story showing the right and wrong way to act. The Sanskrit collection is credited to Vishnu Sharma, who, according to its frame story, composed it to educate the dull sons of King Amarashakti in statecraft and worldly sense.

The American historian William Hardy McNeill wrote Plagues and Peoples, published in 1976. The book was one of the first to treat infectious disease as a force in world history.

'Tomb of Sand' won the International Booker Prize in 2022, and that win was a first on both counts. The novel was written in Hindi by Geetanjali Shree as 'Ret Samadhi' (2018) and translated into English by the American translator Daisy Rockwell, who shared the prize money with her.

It is a later Mahayana Buddhist text of ritual and prophecy, not a work of Ashvaghosha. Ashvaghosha was a Buddhist poet, dramatist and philosopher of the first–second century CE, linked by tradition to the court of the Kushana king Kanishka.

The Rihla, meaning journey, is the Arabic travel book of Ibn Battuta, the Moroccan traveller from Tangier who reached India in 1333.