Books & Authors Mixed Quiz: Set 10

The correct answer is B, Acharya Ramchandra Shukla. His Hindi Sahitya ka Itihas set out the division into Adikal or Veergatha Kal, Purva Madhyakal or Bhaktikal, Uttar Madhyakal or Ritikal and Adhunik Kal, and examinations still follow that scheme; he was also a critic of standing, whose essays and work on Surdas are widely read. Option A, Hazari Prasad Dwivedi, wrote criticism and the novel Banbhatta ki Atmakatha but not this history. Option C, Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi, edited the journal Saraswati and gave his name to an age of Hindi literature, without writing its history. Option D, Shyam Sundar Das, was a scholar and lexicographer associated with the Hindi Shabdsagar. When a question names the four periods, the name wanted is Ramchandra Shukla. Shukla also wrote Chintamani, a collection of critical essays, and his history remains the standard source for the period names that examinations use.

The correct answer is A, Rousseau. Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in The Social Contract (1762) that the English people are free only during the election of members of Parliament, and are slaves once the election is over. He used the line to attack representative government. For Rousseau sovereignty rested in the general will of the people and could not be handed over to deputies, so only direct democracy counted as real self-rule. The remark is quoted in polity papers as the classic criticism of indirect democracy. Option B is wrong because John Locke defended representative government and the natural rights to life, liberty and property, and his Two Treatises justified the settlement of 1688 in England. Option C is wrong because Plato, in The Republic, wanted rule by philosopher-kings and distrusted democracy altogether. Option D is wrong because Aristotle, in Politics, classified constitutions and called man a political animal, but this saying is not his. Exam tip: Rousseau — The Social Contract, general will, 'man is born free but everywhere he is in chains'.

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.

The correct answer is B, Adam Smith. The Scottish thinker Adam Smith published this book in 1776, and it is treated as the starting point of economics as a separate subject, which is why he is called the father of economics; its most quoted idea is the invisible hand, by which the self-interest of individuals is said to serve the wider good. Option A is wrong because David Ricardo wrote Principles of Political Economy and Taxation in 1817 and is remembered for comparative advantage and the theory of rent. Option C is wrong because Thomas Robert Malthus wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798 on the race between population and food. Option D is wrong because John Stuart Mill wrote Principles of Political Economy and the essay On Liberty, both later works of a different character.

The correct answer is B, Karl Marx. Karl Marx published the first volume of Das Kapital in 1867 as his full critique of the capitalist mode of production, built around surplus value and the exploitation of labour; the later volumes were edited and brought out by Friedrich Engels after Marx died. Option A is wrong because Engels was Marx's lifelong collaborator and co-author of The Communist Manifesto of 1848, but Das Kapital is credited to Marx himself. Option C is wrong because Lenin's own writings, such as Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism and The State and Revolution, came half a century later. Option D is wrong because Friedrich Hayek argued on the opposite side in The Road to Serfdom, warning that central planning leads to the loss of liberty.

The correct answer is A, Shashi Tharoor. Kerala: God's Own Country is an illustrated book on the land, people and culture of Kerala, written by Shashi Tharoor with photographs by M.F. Husain and brought out in 2009. Tharoor, a former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and later a Member of Parliament from Thiruvananthapuram, has written many other books, among them The Great Indian Novel, India: From Midnight to the Millennium, An Era of Darkness and Why I Am a Hindu. 'God's Own Country' is also the tourism tagline of Kerala. Option B is wrong because Jeet Thayil is a poet and novelist known for Narcopolis, which reached the Booker shortlist in 2012. Option C is wrong because Sudha Murthy writes fiction and essays such as Wise and Otherwise, Dollar Bahu and Three Thousand Stitches. Option D is wrong because Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai was a Malayalam novelist who wrote Chemmeen and won the Jnanpith Award in 1984. Exam tip: Tharoor - The Great Indian Novel; Thakazhi - Chemmeen; Thayil - Narcopolis.

The correct answer is B, Stephen Hawking. The British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking wrote A Brief History of Time in 1988 to explain the Big Bang, black holes and the nature of time to readers without a background in physics, and it became one of the best-selling science books ever published. He later wrote The Universe in a Nutshell and The Grand Design. Option A is wrong because Carl Sagan wrote Cosmos, another famous popular science book, and in fact contributed an introduction to Hawking's book. Option C is wrong because Richard Dawkins wrote The Selfish Gene, which is about evolution rather than cosmology. Option D is wrong because James Watson wrote The Double Helix, his personal account of the discovery of the structure of DNA. Attach each title to its subject and the options separate cleanly.

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 A, Jhumpa Lahiri. Jhumpa Lahiri, born in London to Bengali parents and brought up in the United States, moved to Rome and began writing in Italian rather than in English. Her Italian work includes the memoir In Altre Parole, published in English as In Other Words, and the novel Dove mi trovo, which she later put into English herself as Whereabouts. She first won fame in English with Interpreter of Maladies, the story collection that took the Pulitzer Prize in 1999, and with the novel The Namesake. Option B is wrong because Vikram Seth writes in English, as in A Suitable Boy and the verse novel The Golden Gate. Option C is wrong because Kiran Desai writes in English and won the Booker Prize in 2006 for The Inheritance of Loss. Option D is wrong because Arundhati Roy also writes in English, as in The God of Small Things. Exam tip: tie Jhumpa Lahiri to Interpreter of Maladies, the Pulitzer of 1999 and her later Italian books.

The correct answer is A, Dhanpat Rai Srivastava. He first published under the name Nawab Rai and then took the pen name Premchand, under which he wrote Godan, Gaban, Nirmala, Sevasadan, Rangbhoomi and Karmabhoomi, and stories such as Kafan, Panch Parmeshwar and Bade Ghar ki Beti. Option B, Suryakant Tripathi, is the real name behind another pen name, Nirala, one of the four poets of Chhayavad. Option C, Sachchidanand Hiranand Vatsyayan, is the real name of Agyeya, who edited Tar Saptak and began the Prayogvad movement. Option D, Ayodhya Singh Upadhyay, wrote under the name Hariaudh and is remembered for Priya Pravas. All four options are genuine name-and-pen-name pairs, and papers ask any one of them, so learn the set together rather than Premchand alone.

The correct answer is B, John Maynard Keynes. Written during the Great Depression and published in 1936, this book argued that an economy can settle at a level of high unemployment on its own, and that the remedy is to raise effective demand through government spending; it created macroeconomics as we know it and the whole school called Keynesian economics. Option A is wrong because Alfred Marshall wrote Principles of Economics in 1890 and shaped the earlier neo-classical approach to demand and supply. Option C is wrong because Paul Samuelson wrote the famous textbook Economics and was the first American to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Option D is wrong because Milton Friedman, author of Capitalism and Freedom, led the monetarist reply to Keynes rather than writing this book.

The correct answer is B, Ashapurna Devi. The Bengali novelist received the Jnanpith for the year 1976 for Pratham Pratishruti, the first book of a trilogy about three generations of women in a Bengali household, and she was the first woman to be honoured with the award.

Option A, Mahadevi Verma, the Hindi poet of the Chhayavaad movement, won the Jnanpith for 1982 for Yama and was the first Hindi woman writer honoured, but she came six years after Ashapurna Devi. Option C, Amrita Pritam, won for 1981 and was the first Punjabi writer honoured with the Jnanpith; she was also the first woman to win a Sahitya Akademi Award, back in 1956, and that earlier first is what tempts candidates towards her here. Option D, Mahashweta Devi, the Bengali writer and activist, won for 1996. All four are women laureates, so the question turns purely on the order of years.

The correct answer is A, Milkha Singh. The Race of My Life was written by the sprinter Milkha Singh, known as the Flying Sikh, together with his daughter Sonia Sanwalka, and it describes his childhood during Partition, his rise in Indian athletics and the fourth place in the 400 metres at the 1960 Rome Olympics that he regretted all his life. The film Bhaag Milkha Bhaag was based on this book. Option B is wrong because P T Usha, the athlete from Kerala, is not the author of this title. Option C is wrong because Gurbachan Singh Randhawa, the hurdler who finished fifth at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, did not write it. Option D is wrong because Sriram Singh, the eight hundred metres runner of the 1976 Montreal Olympics, is not its author.

The correct answer is B, Sachin Tendulkar. Playing It My Way is the autobiography of the batsman Sachin Tendulkar, published in 2014 soon after he retired, and it was written with the sports writer Boria Majumdar. The book covers his first Test at sixteen, the 2011 World Cup win and his hundredth international century. Option A is wrong because Rahul Dravid has not written an autobiography; the volume Timeless Steel about him is a collection of essays by other writers. Option C is wrong because Sourav Ganguly's book is titled A Century Is Not Enough. Option D is wrong because Virender Sehwag is the subject of books by others rather than the author of a well-known autobiography. Remember the pairing by title: my way for Tendulkar, from the heart for Kapil Dev, sunny days for Gavaskar.

The correct answer is B, Niccolo Machiavelli. The Florentine writer Machiavelli wrote The Prince in 1513 and it was published in 1532; it advises a ruler to judge an action by whether it preserves the state rather than by whether it is virtuous, and for this it is called the first work of modern political realism and its author the father of modern political thought. Option A is wrong because Thomas Hobbes wrote Leviathan in 1651, arguing for an absolute sovereign as the escape from the state of nature. Option C is wrong because John Locke wrote Two Treatises of Government in defence of natural rights, consent and limited government. Option D is wrong because Montesquieu wrote The Spirit of the Laws, which gave the world the doctrine of the separation of powers between the legislature, the executive and the judiciary.

The correct answer is C, 1930. Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman was given the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930 for his work on the scattering of light and for the effect that carries his name, by which light passing through a transparent medium changes in wavelength. He was the first Indian and the first Asian to win a Nobel Prize in the sciences.

Option A, 1913, is the year of Tagore's Nobel Prize for Literature, not of Raman's. Option B, 1928, is the year in which Raman announced the discovery itself, on 28 February, a date observed in India as National Science Day; the prize followed two years later. Option D, 1947, is the year of independence and has nothing to do with the award. Raman was also given the Bharat Ratna in 1954, in the first list of that honour.

The correct answer is B, Mary Kom. Unbreakable is the autobiography of the boxer M C Mary Kom of Manipur, a multiple world champion and an Olympic bronze medallist at London in 2012, and the book describes her journey from a farming family in Manipur to the world stage while raising a family. Option A is wrong because Saina Nehwal's book is titled Playing to Win, with the subtitle My Life On and Off Court. Option C is wrong because Sania Mirza's autobiography is Ace Against Odds, a title that borrows a term from tennis. Option D is wrong because the wrestler Sakshi Malik, the Rio Olympics bronze medallist, is not the author of this book. A useful hint is that each title hints at the sport, so match the word to the game before choosing.

The correct answer is B, The Social Contract. Jean-Jacques Rousseau published The Social Contract in 1762 with the opening claim that man is born free yet everywhere is in chains, and he held that legitimate authority rests only on the general will of the whole people, an idea that fed directly into the French Revolution and into the modern notion of popular sovereignty. Option A is wrong because Hobbes in Leviathan placed sovereignty in a single ruler to whom subjects surrender their rights permanently. Option C is wrong because Plato's Republic describes an ideal state ruled by philosopher kings and says nothing of a general will. Option D is wrong because On Liberty by John Stuart Mill is an argument for the freedom of the individual against interference by the state or by society, which is a different question altogether.

The correct answer is C, Abhinav Bindra. The shooter Abhinav Bindra, who won the ten metre air rifle gold at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and became independent India's first individual Olympic gold medallist, wrote this book with the sports journalist Rohit Brijnath. The subtitle names the achievement, which makes the answer clear in the question itself. Option A is wrong because Gagan Narang, a bronze medallist at the London Olympics in 2012, is not its author. Option B is wrong because Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, who won a silver in double trap at Athens in 2004, did not write it. Option D is wrong because Jaspal Rana, a decorated shooter of the Asian Games and later a coach, is not the author. Note the pairing of shooting with this title.

The correct answer is B, Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi wrote Hind Swaraj, also published in English as Indian Home Rule, in 1909 while sailing from London to South Africa, and he cast it as a dialogue between a reader and an editor; in it he rejects industrial civilisation and modern machinery, and argues that true self-rule means rule over oneself achieved by non-violent means. Option A is wrong because Bal Gangadhar Tilak wrote Gita Rahasya while imprisoned at Mandalay, along with The Arctic Home in the Vedas. Option C is wrong because Gokhale, Gandhi's own political mentor, is remembered for his speeches and for the Servants of India Society rather than for a book of this kind. Option D is wrong because Lala Lajpat Rai wrote Unhappy India and Young India, which are separate works.