Books & Authors Quiz: Famous English Novels and Authors

The correct answer is B, Charles Dickens. Oliver Twist, published in parts between 1837 and 1839, is his second novel and follows an orphan boy through a workhouse and the streets of London. Dickens also wrote A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, David Copperfield, Hard Times and The Pickwick Papers, and the workhouse, the pickpocket and the debtors' prison are the marks of his world.

Option A, Benazir Habib, is not the author of any novel that appears in general awareness lists. Option C, Paul Kennedy, is a historian known for The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, a work of history and not fiction. Option D, Eric Segal, wrote the popular novel Love Story in 1970, more than a century after Oliver Twist, so the period alone rules him out. When a Victorian title of London poverty is given, Dickens is the safe answer.

The correct answer is D, Jhumpa Lahiri. Unaccustomed Earth, published in 2008, is her second collection of short stories and, like most of her work, deals with Bengali families settled in the United States. Her first collection, Interpreter of Maladies, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000, and her novel The Namesake was widely read and filmed.

Option A, Shobha De, is known for Socialite Evenings and Starry Nights, novels of Mumbai society. Option B, Arundhati Roy, wrote The God of Small Things, which won the Booker Prize in 1997, and later The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. Option C, Anita Nair, wrote Ladies Coupe and Mistress. All four are Indian women writing in English, which is why the question is set this way; only Lahiri writes of the Bengali diaspora in America, and Unaccustomed Earth is hers.

The correct answer is B, Priyanka Chopra Jonas. Unfinished, published in 2021, is her memoir, written in English, and it recounts her school years in India and the United States, her win at a beauty pageant and her move from Hindi films to work abroad. The title itself signals a life the writer regards as still in progress.

Option A, Alia Bhatt, has not written a memoir, and no such book stands in her name. Option C, Deepika Padukone, is likewise not an author, though she is often placed in these options because she belongs to the same set of leading actors. Option D, Katrina Kaif, has also written no memoir. In a question of this kind only one of the four names has actually published a book, and here the book and the name are tied by the word Unfinished.

The correct answer is D, Khushwant Singh. The End of India, published in 2003, is his book of essays written in English on communal violence and the danger it poses to the idea of India. He is better remembered for the novel Train to Pakistan, a story of Partition, and for Delhi and his newspaper columns.

Option A, Dr. Manmohan Singh, was an economist and Prime Minister whose name is tied to policy papers rather than to such a book. Option B, Salman Rushdie, wrote Midnight's Children, which won the Booker Prize in 1981, and The Satanic Verses. Option C, Shashi Tharoor, wrote The Great Indian Novel and An Era of Darkness, and because his books also argue about India's past, he is the strongest distractor here. Tie the word Partition, and this title, to Khushwant Singh.

The correct answer is B, Salman Rushdie. Midnight's Children came out in 1981 and tells the story of children born at the hour of India's independence. It won the Booker Prize that year and was later voted the best of all Booker winners in two special polls, which is why it is the most asked Indian English novel of all.

Option A, Vikram Seth, wrote A Suitable Boy, a long novel of the nineteen fifties, and The Golden Gate, but he has not won the Booker. Option C, Amitav Ghosh, wrote The Shadow Lines and Sea of Poppies, and although Sea of Poppies reached the Booker shortlist, it did not win. Option D, V. S. Naipaul, did win the Booker, but in 1971 for In a Free State, and he also received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001. Fix the year 1981 to Rushdie.

The correct answer is C, Arundhati Roy. The God of Small Things, published in 1997, is set in Kerala and won the Booker Prize the same year, making her the first Indian woman to receive that award. She published her second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, twenty years later, in between writing essays on politics and the environment.

Option A, Kiran Desai, won the Booker in 2006 for The Inheritance of Loss, so she is a genuine Booker winner but not the author of this novel. Option B, Anita Desai, is Kiran Desai's mother and wrote Fire on the Mountain and Clear Light of Day; she was shortlisted for the Booker three times without winning. Option D, Kamala Markandaya, wrote Nectar in a Sieve, an earlier novel of village life. The mother and daughter pair is the trap in this question.

The correct answer is B, George Orwell. Animal Farm, published in 1945, is a short novel in which farm animals drive out their owner and set up their own rule, which soon turns into the tyranny they had overthrown. George Orwell was the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair, and his other famous novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, appeared in 1949.

Option A, Aldous Huxley, wrote Brave New World, another famous novel of a controlled society, which makes it the closest distractor here. Option C, H. G. Wells, wrote scientific romances such as The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds. Option D, Thomas Hardy, wrote novels of rural England such as Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd. Keep the pair Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four under one name, Orwell.

The correct answer is C, Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice was published in 1813 and follows Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy through the manners and marriages of English country society. Austen also wrote Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Mansfield Park and Persuasion, and her novels turn on family, money and marriage rather than on adventure.

Option A, Charlotte Bronte, wrote Jane Eyre, the story of a governess, and is often placed against Austen in these questions. Option B, Emily Bronte, her sister, wrote the single novel Wuthering Heights. Option D, George Eliot, was the pen name of Mary Ann Evans, who wrote Silas Marner, Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss. All four are nineteenth-century English women novelists, so the pairing of title to name must be learnt rather than guessed.

The correct answer is A, Aravind Adiga. The White Tiger, his first novel, is told as a series of letters by a driver who rises from a village to become a businessman in Bangalore, and it won the Booker Prize in 2008. He later wrote Last Man in Tower and Selection Day.

Option B, Kiran Desai, won the same prize two years earlier, in 2006, for The Inheritance of Loss, which is why her name sits here. Option C, Amitav Ghosh, is a major Indian novelist in English who has been shortlisted for the Booker but has not won it; he received the Jnanpith Award. Option D, Jhumpa Lahiri, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000, an American award, not the Booker. The safe line to memorise is Naipaul 1971, Rushdie 1981, Roy 1997, Kiran Desai 2006 and Adiga 2008.

The correct answer is B, Wuthering Heights. Emily Bronte published it in 1847 under the pen name Ellis Bell, and it was the only novel she wrote before her death the following year. Set on the Yorkshire moors, it turns on Heathcliff and Catherine, and its wildness marks it off from the drawing-room world of Jane Austen.

Option A, Jane Eyre, was written by her elder sister Charlotte Bronte in the same year, and the two books are constantly exchanged in question papers. Option C, Middlemarch, is George Eliot's long novel of provincial English life. Option D, Villette, is another of Charlotte Bronte's novels, drawn from her time in Brussels, so three of the four options belong to writers of the same household or generation. Remember that Emily wrote one novel only.

The correct answer is C, R. K. Narayan. The Guide, published in 1958, is the story of Raju, a tourist guide who is taken for a holy man, and it is set in Malgudi, the imaginary south Indian town Narayan built across his books. Swami and Friends, The English Teacher and Malgudi Days belong to the same town, and the novel won him the Sahitya Akademi Award.

Option A, Mulk Raj Anand, wrote Untouchable and Coolie, novels of caste and labour. Option B, Raja Rao, wrote Kanthapura, about a village drawn into the freedom movement, and The Serpent and the Rope. These three names form the founding trio of Indian English fiction and are always offered together. Option D, Ruskin Bond, wrote The Room on the Roof and stories of the hills. Malgudi belongs only to Narayan.

The correct answer is C, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Interpreter of Maladies, her first book, is a collection of nine stories about Indian families in America, and it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000. The Pulitzer is an American award, given on the recommendation of a board at Columbia University in New York.

Option A, the Booker Prize, is a British award for a novel written in English, and a collection of short stories was not eligible for it at that time; the Indian-origin winners are Naipaul, Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Kiran Desai and Adiga. Option B, the Nobel Prize in Literature, honours a writer's whole body of work, and among writers connected with India it has gone to Rabindranath Tagore in 1913, Kipling in 1907 and Naipaul in 2001. Option D, the Jnanpith Award, is India's own literary honour, given for writing in the recognised Indian languages and in English.