Books & Authors Mixed Quiz: Set 7

The correct answer is C, Economic Sciences. Amartya Sen was awarded the prize in Economic Sciences in 1998 for his contributions to welfare economics, among them his work on social choice, on poverty and on the causes of famines. He was the first Asian to receive this prize, and he had earlier been given the Bharat Ratna in 1999.

Option A, Literature, is the category of Tagore in 1913 and of V. S. Naipaul in 2001. Option B, Peace, is the category of Mother Teresa in 1979 and Kailash Satyarthi in 2014. Option D, Physiology or Medicine, is the category in which Hargobind Khorana was honoured in 1968 for his work on the genetic code. The prize in Economic Sciences is the one that was not in Alfred Nobel's will but was added by the central bank of Sweden in 1968.

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, 21. The Fellowship, not the annual award, is the highest honour the Sahitya Akademi confers, and its rules restrict it to twenty-one living writers at any one time. Because a new Fellow can therefore be elected only when a place falls vacant, Fellows are often described as the immortals of Indian literature.

Option A, 11, is not the figure for either honour. Option C, 24, is the number of languages in which the Akademi gives its annual awards, and mixing the two numbers is exactly the error the question is set to catch. Option D, 31, matches nothing in the Akademi's rules. The distinction to carry into the hall is that the Sahitya Akademi Award is given every year to about two dozen books, one in each recognised language, while the Fellowship is a standing honour for a person and is capped at twenty-one holders.

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 B, Tulsidas. He composed the Ramcharitmanas in Awadhi in the sixteenth century, retelling the story of Rama in seven books, and it remains the most widely read work of Hindi devotional poetry. His other works are the Vinay Patrika, the Kavitavali, the Gitavali and the Dohavali, and he belongs to the Rambhakti branch of the Sagun stream. Option A, Surdas, is of the Krishnabhakti branch and wrote the Sursagar, the Sur Saravali and the Sahitya Lahari; papers put him here because both poets belong to the same age. Option C, Kabir, is of the Nirgun stream, and his sayings survive in the Bijak. Option D, Malik Muhammad Jayasi, wrote the Padmavat and leads the Sufi or Premmargi branch. All four are Bhaktikal poets, which is exactly why the work, not the age, must be remembered.

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 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 A, Rabindranath Tagore, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 for Gitanjali, the English rendering of his own Bengali poems. He was the first Indian and also the first person from Asia to be awarded a Nobel Prize in any category, and the prize brought Indian writing to the notice of readers across Europe.

Option B, Mother Teresa, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, sixty six years later, for her work among the poor and the dying in Kolkata. Option C, Amartya Sen, won the prize in Economic Sciences in 1998 for his work on welfare economics and famines. Option D, C. V. Raman, won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930 for the scattering of light known as the Raman Effect, which makes him the first Indian to win a Nobel in the sciences but still seventeen years after Tagore.

The correct answer is B, NR Narayana Murthy. A Better India: A Better World was written by N R Narayana Murthy, the co-founder of Infosys, and published in 2009. The book collects his lectures and talks to students and business audiences, and argues that India will improve only through honest institutions, respect for public money and what he calls compassionate capitalism, in which business creates jobs and pays its taxes rather than seeking favours. Narayana Murthy started Infosys in 1981 with six colleagues and a small sum borrowed from his wife Sudha Murty. A is wrong because Shashi Tharoor wrote An Era of Darkness and The Great Indian Novel. C is wrong because Ratan Tata has not written such a book, though several biographies of him exist. D is wrong because Gurcharan Das wrote India Unbound and The Difficulty of Being Good. Exam tip: Narayana Murthy, Infosys, A Better India A Better World, 2009.

The correct answer is C, 1961. The Jnanpith Award was instituted in 1961 by Bharatiya Jnanpith, and it is regarded as the highest literary honour given in India. It goes to an Indian citizen writing in one of the languages of the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution, and a writer may receive it only once.

Option A, 1944, is the year Bharatiya Jnanpith itself was founded as a literary and research trust by Sahu Shanti Prasad Jain and Rama Jain, seventeen years before the award was created. Option B, 1954, is the year the Government of India set up the Sahitya Akademi, which is a different institution altogether and gives its own annual awards. Option D, 1965, is the year for which the first Jnanpith was actually given, to G. Sankara Kurup, four years after the award was instituted. Keeping all four dates separate, 1944 the trust, 1954 the Akademi, 1961 the award and 1965 the first winner, disposes of a whole family of questions.

The correct answer is C, Satyameva Jayate. Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya popularised the slogan Satyameva Jayate, meaning truth alone triumphs, and it was later adopted as the national motto of India. The line comes from the Mundaka Upanishad, and it is written in Devanagari on the abacus of the Lion Capital of Ashoka, which India adopted as the State Emblem in January 1950. Malaviya founded Banaras Hindu University in 1916, edited the newspaper Abhyudaya, served four terms as president of the Congress and was given the Bharat Ratna in 2015. A is wrong because Vande Mataram was written by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and appears in his novel Anandamath. B is wrong because Jai Jawan Jai Kisan was Lal Bahadur Shastri's slogan, raised during the 1965 war. D is wrong because Inquilab Zindabad was popularised by the poet Hasrat Mohani and used by Bhagat Singh. Exam tip: Satyameva Jayate, from the Mundaka Upanishad, popularised by Malaviya, India's national motto.

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 B, Hindi. Tomb of Sand is Daisy Rockwell's English translation of Ret Samadhi, a Hindi novel by Geetanjali Shree about an eighty year old woman who, after the death of her husband, travels to Pakistan to face the memories of Partition. Its win in 2022 was the first for a book written in any Indian language, and the prize money was shared between the author and the translator.

Option A, Bengali, is the language of Tagore, whose Gitanjali brought him the Nobel Prize, but no Bengali book has won this prize. Option C, Malayalam, and Option D, Marathi, are languages with long literary traditions and many Jnanpith winners, yet neither had produced an International Booker winner. The International Booker is given for a translated book, which is what separates it from the Booker Prize for a novel written in English.

The correct answer is A, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. India Wins Freedom is Azad's account of the last decade of the freedom struggle, of the Cabinet Mission and of the events that led to partition. Azad was president of the Indian National Congress during a crucial period and later became the first education minister of independent India.

Option B, Rajendra Prasad, wrote his own autobiography and books such as India Divided, but not this title. Option C, Jawaharlal Nehru, wrote An Autobiography, The Discovery of India and Glimpses of World History, all of them separate works. Option D, Subhas Chandra Bose, wrote An Indian Pilgrim, an unfinished autobiography, and The Indian Struggle, a political history of the movement, so neither matches the book named in the question.

The correct answer is A, Amrita Pritam. She received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1956 for her Punjabi poetry collection Sunehe, meaning messages, and was the first woman to be honoured by the Akademi. She later became the first Punjabi writer to win the Jnanpith, for the year 1981, so both her firsts are worth remembering as a pair.

Option B, Mahadevi Verma, the Hindi poet, won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1942, which is impossible since the Akademi did not exist then; she was honoured by it much later and won the Jnanpith for 1982. Option C, Ashapurna Devi, was the first woman to win the Jnanpith, for 1976, and that neighbouring first is the trap in this question. Option D, Kamala Das, who also wrote as Madhavikutty, won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1985 for her Malayalam short stories. Only Amrita Pritam holds the 1956 first.

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, Malik Muhammad Jayasi. The Padmavat, written in Awadhi, tells of Ratnasen of Chittor and Padmavati of Singhal and carries a Sufi meaning under the love story; Jayasi also wrote the Akhrawat. Option A, Keshavdas, belongs to a later age altogether, the Ritikal, and wrote the Ramchandrika, the Rasikpriya and the Kavipriya. Option B, Bihari, is also of the Ritikal and is known for the Bihari Satsai of about seven hundred couplets. Option D, Raskhan, was a Krishna devotee whose Sujan Raskhan and Prem Vatika belong to the Sagun stream of the Bhaktikal, so although he is of the right age he is of the wrong branch. Fix the branch with the name: Kabir for Gyanmargi, Jayasi for Premmargi, Tulsidas for Rambhakti and Surdas for Krishnabhakti.

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 A, Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan. The Nobel Peace Prize of 2014 was shared by Kailash Satyarthi, who has worked for decades against child labour and founded the Bachpan Bachao Andolan, and Malala Yousafzai, who campaigned for the right of girls to go to school. She was seventeen at the time and remains the youngest Nobel laureate.

Option B, Barack Obama, received the Peace Prize in 2009, five years earlier. Option C, Wangari Maathai of Kenya, received it in 2004 for her work on the environment and was the first African woman to be given the prize. Option D, Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia, received it in 2019 for the peace agreement with Eritrea. Only Malala shared the award of 2014 with the Indian laureate.

The correct answer is B, Rabindra Bhavan, New Delhi. The building on Feroze Shah Road, named after Rabindranath Tagore, houses all three of India's national academies, the Sahitya Akademi for letters, the Lalit Kala Akademi for the fine arts and the Sangeet Natak Akademi for the performing arts. The Sahitya Akademi also runs regional offices in Kolkata, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Chennai.

Option A, Vigyan Bhavan, is the conference centre used for large government and international meetings. Option C, Shastri Bhavan, houses several Union ministries and their departments. Option D, Nirman Bhavan, houses the health and urban development ministries. All three are well known Delhi government buildings, which is what makes them serviceable distractors, but the literary address is Rabindra Bhavan, and its name itself is the clue.