Books & Authors Mixed Quiz: Set 9

The correct answer is A, Bijak. The Bijak gathers Kabir’s verse in three parts — the Sakhi, the Sabad and the Ramaini — and it carries his Nirgun teaching, that god has no form and no image, and his attack on ritual and caste. Kabir led the Gyanmargi branch of the Nirgun stream and is said to have been a disciple of Ramanand. Option B, Padavali, is the name used for the collections of Vidyapati and of Meerabai, not of Kabir. Option C, Sur Saravali, is a work of Surdas, who also wrote the Sursagar and the Sahitya Lahari. Option D, Rasikpriya, is by Keshavdas of the Ritikal and is a book on poetics rather than devotion. The three parts of the Bijak are themselves asked in papers, so memorise them.

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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 C, Phanishwar Nath Renu. Maila Anchal, set in a village of north Bihar just after independence, is counted the first major regional novel, or anchalik upanyas, of Hindi; Renu also wrote Parti Parikatha and the story Maare Gaye Gulfam, on which a well known film was based. Option A, Shrilal Shukla, wrote Raag Darbari, the satire on village politics and the officials who run it. Option B, Hazari Prasad Dwivedi, was a critic and essayist whose novel Banbhatta ki Atmakatha imagines the life of the Sanskrit writer Banabhatta. Option D, Bhisham Sahni, wrote Tamas, on the violence of Partition. Four novelists, four novels: this is the pattern the paper follows, and each pair should be learnt whole. The word anchalik is itself worth holding, because a question may ask which novel began the regional tradition in Hindi rather than who wrote Maila Anchal.

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, 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 A, G. Sankara Kurup. The Malayalam poet received the first Jnanpith Award, for the year 1965, for his collection of poems Odakkuzhal, meaning the reed flute. In those early years the award was given for one outstanding work rather than for a lifetime of writing, a practice that changed in 1982.

Option B, Sumitranandan Pant, received the Jnanpith for 1968 for Chidambara and was the first Hindi writer to be honoured, not the first of all. Option C, Tarashankar Bandopadhyay, won for 1966 for the Bengali novel Ganadevata, making him the second recipient and the first in Bengali. Option D, Kuvempu, the pen name of K. V. Puttappa, won for 1967 for the Kannada epic Sri Ramayana Darshanam and was the first Kannada writer honoured. The four are the first four laureates in order, so learning the sequence Kurup, Bandopadhyay, Kuvempu, Pant covers several possible questions at once.

The correct answer is C, Kautilya. Kautilya, also known as Chanakya and as Vishnugupta, was the minister and guide of Chandragupta Maurya, and his Arthashastra is a manual of statecraft that deals with the duties of a king, the organisation of the treasury, taxation, trade, spying, law and war; it is the earliest Indian work usually placed under economics and politics together. Option A is wrong because Chandragupta Maurya was the ruler served by Kautilya and not the author. Option B is wrong because Kalidasa was the Sanskrit poet and dramatist of works such as Abhijnanasakuntalam and Meghadutam. Option D is wrong because Megasthenes was the Greek ambassador at the Mauryan court whose own account of India was called Indica, a different book altogether. The Arthashastra was rediscovered in 1905 by R. Shamasastry, who found a manuscript of it in Mysore and published it.

The correct answer is B, Gitanjali, a collection of devotional poems that Tagore himself rendered into English prose poetry. The Nobel Prize for Literature came to him in 1913 for these verses, the citation praising their sensitive and beautiful language, and it made him the first Asian Nobel laureate.

Option A, Gora, is one of Tagore's major novels, a long work about identity and reform in Bengal, but not the book the prize was given for. Option C, The Home and the World, the English title of Ghare Baire, is another of his novels, later filmed by Satyajit Ray. Option D, Chokher Bali, is an early novel of his about widowhood and desire. All three are genuine works of Tagore, which is what makes the options plausible, but only Gitanjali carried him to the Nobel.

The correct answer is C, A P J Abdul Kalam. Wings of Fire was written by the aerospace scientist and eleventh President of India, A P J Abdul Kalam, along with Arun Tiwari, and it traces his life from a modest childhood at Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu to his work on the satellite launch vehicle and the missile programme. His other titles include India 2020, Ignited Minds, My Journey, Turning Points and Indomitable Spirit. Option A is wrong because Homi Jehangir Bhabha, the architect of India's atomic energy programme, wrote scientific papers rather than a popular autobiography. Option B is wrong because Vikram Sarabhai, the father of the Indian space programme, is the subject of biographies by others. Option D is wrong because C V Raman, the Nobel laureate in physics, is remembered for the Raman effect and not for this book.

The correct answer is D, Sumitranandan Pant. He received the Jnanpith Award in 1968 for his collection Chidambara, the first Hindi writer to be honoured with it; the award itself began in 1965, when it went to the Malayalam poet G. Sankara Kurup. Option B, Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, came next among Hindi writers, receiving it in 1972 for Urvashi. Option C, Agyeya, received it in 1978 for Kitni Navon Mein Kitni Baar. Option A, Mahadevi Verma, received it in 1982 for Yama. The four names in this question are therefore the first four Hindi recipients in order, and the order is what papers test. The Jnanpith is given for literature in the languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution and in English. Note also that the Jnanpith and the Sahitya Akademi Award are separate honours, so a question naming one of them must not be answered with a winner of the other.

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 B, Dadabhai Naoroji. Dadabhai Naoroji, honoured as the Grand Old Man of India and the first Indian to be elected to the British House of Commons, brought together his writings in this book and showed with figures that a large part of India's wealth was being carried away to Britain every year through salaries, pensions, interest and the cost of the army, a case known as the drain theory. Option A is wrong because Gopal Krishna Gokhale is remembered for his budget speeches and for founding the Servants of India Society, not for this book. Option C is wrong because Romesh Chunder Dutt wrote The Economic History of India, a separate work along the same lines. Option D is wrong because Ranade wrote Essays on Indian Economics and is called a pioneer of Indian economic thought.