Books & Authors Quiz: Books by Presidents and Prime Ministers

The correct answer is B, Jawaharlal Nehru. He wrote it in 1944 while imprisoned in Ahmadnagar Fort, tracing Indian history and thought from the earliest times. Its Hindi version is Bharat Ki Khoj and the television series Bharat Ek Khoj was based on it.

Option A, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, wrote India Divided in 1946, Satyagraha in Champaran and the Hindi autobiography Atmakatha, and because he and Nehru wrote in the same years he is the distractor used most often here. Option C, Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, wrote on philosophy, including Indian Philosophy and The Hindu View of Life, not on history. Option D, Sardar Patel, left speeches and letters rather than a book of this kind. Remember that all three of Nehru's famous titles, An Autobiography, Glimpses of World History and The Discovery of India, were written in prison.

The correct answer is C, Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam. Wings of Fire, written with Arun Tiwari, describes his boyhood in Rameswaram, his training as an engineer and his years in the space and missile programmes, and it is the most frequently asked title in this whole chapter.

Option A, Dr. Zakir Husain, was an educationist whose known work is The Dynamic University. Option B, K. R. Narayanan, is remembered for collections of speeches and essays such as Images and Insights rather than for an autobiography. Option D, Pranab Mukherjee, wrote a political memoir in three volumes, The Dramatic Decade, The Turbulent Years and The Coalition Years, and it is these that examiners set against Kalam's books. Kalam's other titles worth carrying are India 2020, written with Y. S. Rajan, Ignited Minds, Turning Points and My Journey.

The correct answer is A, P. V. Narasimha Rao. The Insider is a novel that follows a politician's climb through state and national politics, and it is read as a lightly disguised account of the system its author knew from the inside. He was a scholar of several languages and also wrote on the Ayodhya question.

Option B, I. K. Gujral, wrote an autobiography, Matters of Discretion, which is a memoir and not fiction. Option C, Morarji Desai, wrote the autobiography The Story of My Life, again a work of recollection. Option D, Chandra Shekhar, left no book that examiners ask about. The fact to hold is a simple one: Narasimha Rao is the only Prime Minister of India to have published a novel, so any question mentioning fiction and the office of Prime Minister points to him.

The correct answer is B, Dr. Rajendra Prasad. The first President of India published India Divided in 1946, examining the demand for partition and the arguments made on both sides in the years before independence. His other works are Satyagraha in Champaran and Atmakatha, the autobiography he wrote in Hindi while in prison.

Option A, Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, wrote on philosophy and religion, not on the political question of partition. Option C, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, wrote India Wins Freedom, the title candidates most often confuse with this one because both names contain the word India and both deal with the same years. Option D, V. V. Giri, came from the trade union movement and wrote Jobs for Our Millions and Industrial Relations. Keep the pair apart: India Divided is Rajendra Prasad, India Wins Freedom is Azad.

The correct answer is A, Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, the second President of India and a professor of philosophy before he entered public life. Besides these two titles he wrote Indian Philosophy in two volumes and The Philosophy of the Upanishads, and Teachers' Day is observed on his birthday, 5 September.

Option B, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, wrote on politics and on the Champaran movement, not on philosophy. Option C, Swami Vivekananda, is the strongest distractor because his lectures on Hinduism are famous, but he held no constitutional office and these particular titles are not his. Option D, Dr. Zakir Husain, the third President, was an educationist known for The Dynamic University. A quick rule keeps this family of questions safe: philosophy and the Upanishads point to Radhakrishnan, education to Zakir Husain, labour to V. V. Giri.

The correct answer is B, R. Venkataraman. His account of the office, published as My Presidential Years, is valued because his term fell in a period of short-lived governments, and it records how a President handles the choice of a Prime Minister when no party has a majority.

Option A, Neelam Sanjiva Reddy, also wrote a memoir, but its title is Without Fear or Favour, and that pairing is the one examiners use to catch candidates who half remember the chapter. Option C, Giani Zail Singh, is not the author of this book. Option D, Shankar Dayal Sharma, is remembered for his speeches rather than for a memoir of this kind. When the title of a book names the office itself, attach it to the person who held that office, and note that Pranab Mukherjee's posthumous volume carries the similar name The Presidential Years.

The correct answer is A, Pranab Mukherjee. These are the second and third volumes of his political memoir, the first being The Dramatic Decade: The Indira Gandhi Years. Together they cover Indian politics from the early 1970s until his election as President, and a fourth volume, The Presidential Years, appeared after his death.

Option B, Manmohan Singh, wrote as an economist, his best-known work being India's Export Trends and the Prospects for Self-Sustained Growth. Option C, K. R. Narayanan, is associated with collections such as Images and Insights. Option D, P. V. Narasimha Rao, wrote the novel The Insider and a book on the Ayodhya question, and since his years in office fall inside the period named in the title, he is the distractor most often chosen. Learn the trilogy as one unit and it cannot be broken up in the options.

The correct answer is B, his daughter Indira. Nehru wrote the letters from prison in the early 1930s to explain the history of the world to a young reader, and they were later collected as Glimpses of World History. The same relationship produced the shorter book Letters from a Father to His Daughter.

Option A, Mahatma Gandhi, exchanged a great many letters with Nehru, but that correspondence is not this book. Option C, Motilal Nehru, was his father and a leader in his own right; the letters ran from father to daughter, not from son to father. Option D, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, was a colleague and the first President, and appears here only as a plausible name from the same generation. Fix the trio of Nehru titles together: An Autobiography, Glimpses of World History and The Discovery of India, all written in jail.

The correct answer is B, Morarji Desai, who published his autobiography under the title The Story of My Life. He had a long career in Gujarat and at the centre before becoming Prime Minister at the head of the first non-Congress government, and the book covers that whole span.

Option A, Lal Bahadur Shastri, did not write an autobiography; the works associated with him are biographies written by others. Option C, Charan Singh, wrote on agriculture and rural economy, including works arguing for peasant proprietorship, rather than a life story of this name. Option D, H. D. Deve Gowda, is not the author of a book examiners ask about. Pair this with the other Prime Ministerial memoirs so the options cannot confuse you: Matters of Discretion is I. K. Gujral's and The Insider is Narasimha Rao's novel.

The correct answer is A, I. K. Gujral. His autobiography, Matters of Discretion, covers a career that ran from the freedom movement through the ministries he held to his term as Prime Minister, and it is the book usually cited alongside the foreign policy approach that carries his name.

Option B, V. P. Singh, is remembered for his politics and his painting and poetry rather than for this title. Option C, Chandra Shekhar, held office for a short period and is not the author examiners ask about. Option D, Manmohan Singh, is an economist whose academic work, India's Export Trends and the Prospects for Self-Sustained Growth, is the title linked with his name, along with collections of his speeches. Titles that sound like memoirs of office are the hardest part of this chapter, so learn them as a short list rather than guessing.

The correct answer is B, Narendra Modi. Exam Warriors is written for school students facing examinations and sets out short chapters on preparation, sleep, play and dealing with pressure. His other titles include the essays in Jyotipunj and collections of poems in Gujarati.

Option A, Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, wrote a great deal for young readers, Ignited Minds above all, which makes him the most tempting wrong answer in this question. Option C, Manmohan Singh, wrote on trade and economic policy. Option D, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, published poetry, including Meri Ekyavan Kavitayen, and his parliamentary speeches as Meri Sansadiya Yatra. Read the subject of the book in the question stem, because this chapter separates its authors by subject as much as by office.

The correct answer is A, Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He was a Hindi poet long before he became Prime Minister, and Meri Ekyavan Kavitayen is his best-known collection. Kaidi Kavirai Ki Kundaliyan holds verses written during the Emergency, and Meri Sansadiya Yatra collects his speeches in Parliament.

Option B, Jawaharlal Nehru, wrote history and memoir in English and published no volume of poetry. Option C, P. V. Narasimha Rao, wrote the novel The Insider and translated literary works, so he is the one other literary Prime Minister and therefore the strongest distractor. Option D, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, wrote India Divided and his Hindi autobiography Atmakatha, which are prose. Sort this chapter's authors by form once, into poetry, fiction, memoir and philosophy, and a question of this type takes only seconds.