Books & Authors Mixed Quiz: Set 1

The correct answer is B, Kautilya, who is also called Chanakya and Vishnugupta and is associated with the Mauryan court of Chandragupta Maurya. The Arthashastra sets out the duties of a king, the working of ministers and spies, taxation, law, trade, agriculture and warfare, and it is one of the main sources for Mauryan administration.

Option A, Vishakhadatta, wrote the play Mudrarakshasa, whose central character is Chanakya himself, which is exactly why the name is placed here as a distractor. Option C, Banabhatta, belongs to a much later age as the court poet of Harshavardhana and wrote the Harshacharita and Kadambari. Option D, Megasthenes, was the Greek ambassador sent by Seleucus Nicator to the Mauryan court, and his account is called Indica, not Arthashastra. Keep the pair firm: Arthashastra by Kautilya, Indica by Megasthenes.

The correct answer is B, Mahatma Gandhi. He wrote the book in Gujarati under the title Satya Na Prayogo, publishing it in parts in his journal, and Mahadev Desai translated it into English. It covers his childhood, his years in England and South Africa and the beginning of his work in India.

Option A, Jawaharlal Nehru, also wrote an autobiography, which appeared under the title Toward Freedom, so he is the closest distractor here. Option C, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, wrote India Wins Freedom, an account of the years leading to Independence rather than a full life story. Option D, Rajendra Prasad, wrote an Atmakatha and the book India Divided. Note also that Gandhi's Hind Swaraj is often placed in such options, but it is a political tract of 1909 and not an autobiography.

The correct answer is C, 1975–1977. The book takes its title from the Emergency, which ran from 1975 to 1977, and recalls those years through the author's own experience of them. The Emergency was proclaimed on 25 June 1975 under Article 352 on the ground of internal disturbance, on the advice of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, and was revoked on 21 March 1977. During it elections were postponed, the press was censored and many opposition leaders were jailed. A is wrong because 1962–1965 covers the war with China and the war with Pakistan, not the Emergency. B is wrong because 1989–1991 is the period of coalition governments and the Mandal agitation. D is wrong because 1969–1971 saw the split in the Congress, bank nationalisation and the Bangladesh war. Exam tip: Emergency declared 25 June 1975, lifted 21 March 1977; the 44th Amendment of 1978 replaced 'internal disturbance' with 'armed rebellion'.

The correct answer is C, Ocean Vuong. The Emperor of Gladness, released in May 2025, is a novel by the Vietnamese-American writer and poet Ocean Vuong. Vuong was born near Saigon in 1988 and came to the United States as a child refugee. He first drew notice for the poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds and then for the novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, and he has held a MacArthur Fellowship; migration, memory and working-class life run through all his writing. A is wrong because Colum McCann is an Irish novelist, best known for Let the Great World Spin. B is wrong because Sharon Lee is an American science-fiction writer and not the author of this novel. D is wrong because Charlotte McConaghy is an Australian novelist, known for Migrations. Exam tip: Ocean Vuong - Night Sky with Exit Wounds, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous and The Emperor of Gladness in 2025.

The correct answer is C, Tennis. 'Ace Against Odds' is the autobiography of Sania Mirza, India's most successful woman tennis player, published in 2016 and written with her father Imran Mirza and Shivani Gupta. The title plays on 'ace', a serve the opponent cannot touch. Sania became the first Indian woman to win a WTA singles title, at Hyderabad in 2005, and went on to win six Grand Slam doubles titles, three in women's doubles with Martina Hingis and three in mixed doubles, and to become world number one in doubles in 2015. She received the Arjuna Award in 2004, the Khel Ratna in 2015 and the Padma Bhushan in 2016. A is wrong because the best-known shooting autobiography is Abhinav Bindra's 'A Shot at History'. B is wrong because badminton star Saina Nehwal's book is 'Playing to Win'. D is wrong because cricket autobiographies include Sachin Tendulkar's 'Playing It My Way'. Exam tip: Ace Against Odds = Sania Mirza (tennis); A Shot at History = Abhinav Bindra (shooting); Playing It My Way = Sachin Tendulkar (cricket).

The correct answer is B, Arundhati Roy. 'Mother Mary Comes to Me' is Arundhati Roy's memoir, published in September 2025, and it is built around her difficult, loving bond with her mother Mary Roy. Mary Roy was a teacher who founded a school in Kerala and won the 1986 Supreme Court case that gave Syrian Christian women an equal share in family property. Arundhati Roy herself won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her first novel, 'The God of Small Things', and later wrote 'The Ministry of Utmost Happiness' along with many essays. A is wrong because Jhumpa Lahiri is known for 'Interpreter of Maladies', which won the Pulitzer Prize, and 'The Namesake'. C is wrong because Vikram Seth wrote 'A Suitable Boy' and 'The Golden Gate'. D is wrong because Chetan Bhagat writes popular novels such as 'Five Point Someone' and 'Half Girlfriend'. Exam tip: Arundhati Roy — 'The God of Small Things', Booker Prize 1997.

The correct answer is C, Mrichchhakatika. That play, whose title means the little clay cart, was written by Shudraka, and it is unusual among Sanskrit dramas because its hero is an impoverished merchant and its plot turns on ordinary city life rather than on gods and kings.

Options A, B and D all belong to Kalidasa. Meghaduta, the cloud messenger, is a lyric poem in which an exiled spirit sends a message to his wife through a passing cloud. Raghuvamsha is a long narrative poem on the dynasty of Raghu, and Kumarasambhava narrates the birth of Kartikeya. The rest of Kalidasa's list, which examiners draw on for this kind of question, is made up of the plays Abhijnanashakuntalam, Vikramorvashiyam and Malavikagnimitram and the seasonal poem Ritusamhara. Learn the seven titles as one block and any odd name out becomes obvious.

The correct answer is A, Jawaharlal Nehru. He wrote The Discovery of India during his imprisonment at Ahmednagar Fort, and the book traces Indian history, thought and civilisation from the earliest times to the national movement of his own day.

Option B, Subhas Chandra Bose, wrote The Indian Struggle, his own account of the freedom movement, which is the title most often placed beside Nehru's in these questions. Option C, Sarojini Naidu, is remembered for her poetry, The Golden Threshold, The Bird of Time and The Broken Wing, rather than for prose on history. Option D, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, wrote Gita Rahasya and The Arctic Home in the Vedas. Since Nehru wrote several well-known books, it helps to hold the three together: The Discovery of India, Glimpses of World History and his autobiography.

The correct answer is C, Tim Wigmore. Test Cricket: A History, published in 2025, was written by the English cricket writer and journalist Tim Wigmore. The book follows the game's longest format from the first Test between England and Australia at Melbourne in March 1877 down to the present day, covering how Test cricket spread across countries, how it changed from era to era, and the pressure it now faces from the shorter formats. Wigmore also co-wrote Cricket 2.0, a study of Twenty20 cricket that was named Wisden Book of the Year. A is wrong because Michael Atherton, the former England captain, writes widely on cricket but not this book. B is wrong because Gideon Haigh is an Australian cricket historian with many other titles to his name. D is wrong because Ramachandra Guha wrote A Corner of a Foreign Field and other works on Indian cricket and history. Exam tip: Tim Wigmore - Test Cricket: A History in 2025 and Cricket 2.0 on Twenty20 cricket.

The correct answer is A, Penguin Random House India. Arundhati Roy's memoir 'Mother Mary Comes to Me' was brought out in India in September 2025 by Penguin Random House India, under its literary imprint Hamish Hamilton. The book is a portrait of the author's mother, Mary Roy, the educationist who founded a school in Kerala and won the 1986 Supreme Court case on the inheritance rights of Syrian Christian women. Penguin Random House is the largest trade publisher in the world and its Indian arm publishes much of the country's serious literary writing. B is wrong because HarperCollins India, though a major literary publisher here, did not bring out this title. C is wrong because Hachette India publishes a wide list but not this memoir. D is wrong because Rupa Publications is an older Indian house known for popular and general interest books. Exam tip: link the book to both names — Arundhati Roy as the author and Penguin Random House India as the publisher.

The correct answer is A, Banabhatta, the court poet of Harshavardhana. The Harshacharita is a biography of his patron and one of the earliest historical biographies written in Sanskrit, while Kadambari is a romance in ornate prose and is often described as one of the first novels in any Indian language.

Option B, Bilhana, wrote Vikramankadevacharita in praise of the Chalukya king Vikramaditya VI, so he too was a court biographer but of a different dynasty. Option C, Dandin, wrote Dashakumaracharita, the tale of ten princes, and the work on poetics called Kavyadarsha. Option D, Bhasa, is an earlier dramatist remembered for Swapnavasavadatta. A useful extra fact for this question is that Harshavardhana was himself an author and wrote the plays Ratnavali, Nagananda and Priyadarshika, so the king and his poet are both examinable.

The correct answer is C, Bal Gangadhar Tilak. He wrote Gita Rahasya during his imprisonment at Mandalay in Burma, reading the Bhagavad Gita as a call to selfless action rather than to withdrawal from the world, an interpretation that suited his own politics of active resistance.

Option A, Lala Lajpat Rai, wrote Unhappy India and The Story of My Deportation. Option B, Bipin Chandra Pal, was the third member of the Lal Bal Pal trio and is remembered chiefly as an orator and editor rather than for this book. Option D, Aurobindo Ghosh, wrote Essays on the Gita as well as The Life Divine, which is exactly why he is placed in these options: two of the four names have written on the Gita. The distinguishing detail is the prison, Mandalay, which belongs to Tilak.

The correct answer is C, Kalhana. He wrote the Rajatarangini, whose name means the river of kings, in Kashmir in the twelfth century. Because he arranged rulers in order of time and used inscriptions, coins and earlier records, the work is treated as the earliest piece of history writing in India in the modern sense.

Option A, Somadeva, also of Kashmir, compiled the Kathasaritsagara, the ocean of streams of story, which is a vast collection of tales rather than a chronicle. Option B, Jayadeva, wrote the Gita Govinda at the court of Lakshmana Sena of Bengal, a lyrical work on Krishna and Radha. Option D, Kshemendra, was another Kashmiri writer of the same broad period, which is why his name is offered here. The examinable phrase is chronicle of Kashmir, and it belongs to Kalhana alone.

The correct answer is A, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. India Wins Freedom is his account of the national movement and of the negotiations in the years around Independence, written from the position of a Congress president of that period. Azad is also remembered for editing the journals Al-Hilal and Al-Balagh.

Option B, Rajendra Prasad, wrote India Divided, a title so close in sound that it is placed here deliberately. Option C, Lala Lajpat Rai, wrote Unhappy India, the third member of this confusing group of titles. Option D, Vallabhbhai Patel, is not associated with a famous book of his own, although his letters and speeches have been published in collected volumes. Learn the three India titles as a single line: Unhappy India by Lajpat Rai, India Divided by Rajendra Prasad, India Wins Freedom by Azad.

The correct answer is B, Panini. The Ashtadhyayi, meaning the work in eight chapters, fixed the rules of Sanskrit in a set of short formulas and is admired as the earliest scientific grammar of any language, since it describes the whole language through a compact system of rules.

Option A, Patanjali, wrote the Mahabhashya, the great commentary on Panini's grammar, so he depends on Panini rather than the other way round; a Patanjali is also credited with the Yoga Sutras. Option C, Amarasimha, compiled the Amarakosha, a thesaurus of Sanskrit words, and he is usually counted among the learned men of the Gupta court. Option D, Bharata Muni, wrote the Natyashastra, the treatise on drama, dance and music. Fix the chain in order: Panini writes the grammar, Patanjali comments on it.

The correct answer is B, Dadabhai Naoroji. In this book he argued that British rule was steadily transferring India's wealth to England through salaries, pensions, home charges and the profits of trade, an argument known as the drain of wealth theory. He is also called the Grand Old Man of India.

Option A, Romesh Chandra Dutt, wrote The Economic History of India and belongs to the same school of economic criticism, which makes him the strongest distractor. Option C, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, was a moderate leader and Gandhi's political mentor, known for his work in the Imperial Legislative Council and for the Servants of India Society rather than for this book. Option D, Mahadev Govind Ranade, was a social reformer and economist of the earlier generation. Naoroji goes with the drain theory, Dutt with the economic history.

The correct answer is C, Valmiki, the author of the Ramayana, who is called the Adi Kavi or first poet because tradition holds that the first verse of classical Sanskrit poetry came from him. The Ramayana is accordingly called the Adi Kavya, the first poem.

Option A, Vyasa, is credited with the Mahabharata, the longer of the two epics, and with arranging the Vedas, but the title of first poet is not his. Option B, Kalidasa, is the greatest poet and dramatist of the classical age and is often called the Shakespeare of India, a different honour altogether. Option D, Ashvaghosha, wrote the Buddhacharita, a life of the Buddha in verse, and is associated with the court of Kanishka. Keep the three titles apart: Adi Kavi for Valmiki, the epic of Vyasa for the Mahabharata, and the classical master for Kalidasa.

The correct answer is C, Bhagat Singh. He wrote the essay in Lahore jail in 1930, answering a fellow prisoner who had suggested that his disbelief came from vanity. The piece is a reasoned statement of his rationalist position and is the best known of his prison writings.

Option A, Chandrashekhar Azad, was his close associate in the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association, but he left no comparable writing. Option B, Ram Prasad Bismil, was a revolutionary of the Kakori case and a poet, and his autobiography written before his execution is a separate item. Option D, Surya Sen, led the Chittagong armoury raid and is remembered for that action rather than for any book. All four names come from the same revolutionary stream, so the question tests whether the candidate has attached the essay to the right one.

The correct answer is D, Vishakhadatta. Mudrarakshasa, meaning the signet ring of Rakshasa, is a political drama in which Chanakya outwits the minister Rakshasa and secures the throne for Chandragupta Maurya. It is one of the few Sanskrit plays with no love story at its centre, and the same author also wrote Devichandraguptam.

Option A, Shudraka, wrote Mrichchhakatika, the little clay cart, which is about a merchant and a courtesan in a city setting. Option B, Bhavabhuti, wrote Uttararamacharita and Malatimadhava and belongs to a later generation of dramatists. Option C, Bhasa, is the earliest of the group and is remembered for Swapnavasavadatta. All four names appear together in options, so attach one title to each in the same order: Mudrarakshasa to Vishakhadatta, Mrichchhakatika to Shudraka, Uttararamacharita to Bhavabhuti and Swapnavasavadatta to Bhasa.

The correct answer is A, B. R. Ambedkar. He prepared the text in 1936 as the presidential address for a conference at Lahore, but the organisers withdrew the invitation over its contents, so the speech was never delivered and he published it himself. His other well-known works include The Problem of the Rupee, Who Were the Shudras and The Buddha and His Dhamma.

Option B, Jyotirao Phule, wrote Gulamgiri in the previous century and founded the Satyashodhak Samaj, so he belongs to the earlier phase of the same struggle. Option C, Periyar E. V. Ramasamy, led the Self-Respect Movement in the south and is associated with the journal Kudi Arasu. Option D, Narayana Guru, led the reform movement in Kerala with the teaching of one caste, one religion, one God. The undelivered speech of 1936 is the detail that fixes the answer to Ambedkar.