Famous Autobiographies and Biographies: Book and Author Pairs

Every General Awareness paper carries at least one question that gives a book and asks for its author, or gives an author and asks for the book. A large share of those questions come from life writing, that is from autobiographies, memoirs and biographies. The advantage for an aspirant is that this material never changes: once the pair is learnt correctly it stays correct.

The three forms and how they differ

An autobiography is the story of a person's whole life written by that person. A memoir is also written by the subject but covers only a phase or a theme, such as the years in office or a single campaign, and it is written from memory rather than from record. A biography is the life of a person written by somebody else. The distinction matters because examiners frame the question as which of the following is an autobiography, and a biography placed among autobiographies is the commonest trap.

Autobiographies and memoirs from Indian public life

The best known Indian autobiography is The Story of My Experiments with Truth by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, written originally in Gujarati. Jawaharlal Nehru wrote An Autobiography, published in Britain as Toward Freedom, and also The Discovery of India and Glimpses of World History, which are histories rather than autobiography. India Wins Freedom is by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.

From later politics come My Presidential Years by R. Venkataraman, My Country My Life by Lal Krishna Advani, One Life Is Not Enough by Natwar Singh, Beyond the Lines by Kuldip Nayar and the three volume memoir of Pranab Mukherjee, of which The Dramatic Decade, The Turbulent Years and The Coalition Years are the parts. Joothan by Omprakash Valmiki is a landmark Dalit autobiography in Hindi.

Science, sport and the arts

The most quoted title in this group is Wings of Fire, the autobiography of A. P. J. Abdul Kalam written with Arun Tiwari; Kalam's other books include India 2020, Ignited Minds and My Journey. In sport, Playing It My Way is by Sachin Tendulkar, Sunny Days by Sunil Gavaskar, Straight from the Heart by Kapil Dev, Unbreakable by Mary Kom, Ace Against Odds by Sania Mirza, A Shot at History by Abhinav Bindra and The Test of My Life by Yuvraj Singh. From the arts, Romancing with Life is the autobiography of Dev Anand and An Unsuitable Boy is by Karan Johar.

Biographies to remember

A biography carries two names in the question, the subject and the writer, and both must be matched. The Man Who Knew Infinity by Robert Kanigel is the life of the mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan. The Accidental Prime Minister by Sanjaya Baru is about Manmohan Singh, and Strictly Personal: Manmohan and Gursharan is by his daughter Daman Singh. Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi is by Katherine Frank. Steve Jobs, the authorised life of the founder of Apple, is by Walter Isaacson, who also wrote lives of Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin.

World figures

Long Walk to Freedom is the autobiography of Nelson Mandela, written partly in prison on Robben Island. The Story of My Life is by Helen Keller, who was deaf and blind from infancy. The Diary of a Young Girl is the wartime diary of Anne Frank, published by her father after her death. Mein Kampf was written by Adolf Hitler while he was in prison, and Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope are by Barack Obama. A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking is a science book and not life writing, though it is often placed in the same list as a distractor.

The method for learning this topic is simple. Keep a two column list, subject and author, revise it in groups of ten, and pay attention to the writers who appear more than once, such as Kalam, Nehru, Pranab Mukherjee and Walter Isaacson, because an examiner who wants a hard question will ask which of these was not written by that author.