Famous English Novels and Authors: Books and Prizes
Book and author pairs for competitive exams: British and American classics, Indian writing in English, the Booker and Pulitzer winners, and the titles papers repeat.
By GK24 Editorial Team· Published · 4 min read
Books and Authors is a scoring part of General Awareness because the answer is a pair: a title on one side and a name on the other. English writing gives the widest set of such pairs, and papers draw from three baskets — the British and American classics that every school library carries, the Indian writers who chose English as their medium, and the prize-winning novels whose awards are themselves asked about. This note lays those pairs out in tables, because a pair learnt in a table is recalled in the hall.
British classics and their authors
| Author | Novels asked about |
|---|---|
| Charles Dickens | Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, David Copperfield, Hard Times, The Pickwick Papers |
| Jane Austen | Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Mansfield Park |
| Charlotte Bronte | Jane Eyre |
| Emily Bronte | Wuthering Heights |
| Thomas Hardy | Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Far from the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native |
| Daniel Defoe | Robinson Crusoe |
| Jonathan Swift | Gulliver's Travels |
| George Eliot | Silas Marner, Middlemarch, The Mill on the Floss |
| George Orwell | Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four |
| Aldous Huxley | Brave New World |
| E. M. Forster | A Passage to India |
| Rudyard Kipling | The Jungle Book, Kim |
Two of these names carry an extra fact worth keeping. George Orwell is a pen name; the writer was Eric Arthur Blair, and Animal Farm came out in 1945 with Nineteen Eighty-Four following in 1949. George Eliot is also a pen name, of Mary Ann Evans, and a question is sometimes framed around that alone.
American and other classics in English
| Novel | Author |
|---|---|
| The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn | Mark Twain, the pen name of Samuel Clemens |
| The Old Man and the Sea, A Farewell to Arms | Ernest Hemingway |
| To Kill a Mockingbird | Harper Lee |
| The Grapes of Wrath | John Steinbeck |
| Moby-Dick | Herman Melville |
| The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald |
| Gone with the Wind | Margaret Mitchell |
| The Harry Potter series | J. K. Rowling |
Indian writing in English
Indian novelists writing in English form a group of their own in question papers, and the three earliest names are always taken together: Mulk Raj Anand, R. K. Narayan and Raja Rao, the trio that set Indian English fiction going in the nineteen thirties.
| Writer | Well-known works |
|---|---|
| Mulk Raj Anand | Untouchable, Coolie, The Village |
| R. K. Narayan | Swami and Friends, The Guide, The English Teacher, Malgudi Days |
| Raja Rao | Kanthapura, The Serpent and the Rope |
| Khushwant Singh | Train to Pakistan, Delhi, The End of India |
| Kamala Markandaya | Nectar in a Sieve |
| Anita Desai | Fire on the Mountain, Clear Light of Day |
| Vikram Seth | A Suitable Boy, The Golden Gate |
| Amitav Ghosh | The Shadow Lines, Sea of Poppies, The Hungry Tide |
| Jhumpa Lahiri | Interpreter of Maladies, The Namesake, Unaccustomed Earth |
| Ruskin Bond | The Room on the Roof, The Blue Umbrella |
| Shashi Tharoor | The Great Indian Novel, An Era of Darkness |
| Chetan Bhagat | Five Point Someone, 2 States |
The prize-winning novels
The Booker Prize, begun in 1969, is given for a novel written in English, and five writers of Indian origin have won it. Their titles and years are asked directly, so learn the row as a unit.
| Year | Writer | Novel |
|---|---|---|
| 1971 | V. S. Naipaul | In a Free State |
| 1981 | Salman Rushdie | Midnight's Children |
| 1997 | Arundhati Roy | The God of Small Things |
| 2006 | Kiran Desai | The Inheritance of Loss |
| 2008 | Aravind Adiga | The White Tiger |
Two more prize facts belong here. Jhumpa Lahiri won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000 for her story collection Interpreter of Maladies. Rabindranath Tagore won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 for Gitanjali, and although he wrote in Bengali, the English rendering carried the book to its readers abroad; Rudyard Kipling, born in Bombay, had won the same Nobel in 1907, and V. S. Naipaul won it in 2001.
English books by Indians that papers quote
- Jawaharlal Nehru wrote The Discovery of India, Glimpses of World History and An Autobiography.
- A. P. J. Abdul Kalam wrote Wings of Fire, India 2020 and Ignited Minds.
- Nirad C. Chaudhuri wrote The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian.
- Siddhartha Mukherjee wrote The Emperor of All Maladies, which won the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction in 2011.
- Priyanka Chopra Jonas wrote the memoir Unfinished.
- Amartya Sen wrote The Argumentative Indian and Development as Freedom.
How to hold the pairs
Attach each title to one distinguishing word. Malgudi belongs to Narayan, Kanthapura to Raja Rao, the partition train to Khushwant Singh, the small things to Arundhati Roy, the white tiger to Adiga, the animals of the farm to Orwell. When four names are offered and all four are genuine writers, the safe route is to recall the second book of the author you are sure of and check whether the paper's title fits his or her world.
Exam Point of View
Almost every question here is a matching question, asked in one of four ways. The first gives a title and asks for the author, which is the standard form. The second gives an author and asks which title is not his or hers, where the trap is a book by a contemporary. The third asks which prize a named book won, so the Booker, the Pulitzer, the Nobel and the Jnanpith must be kept apart: the Booker is British and for a novel in English, the Pulitzer is American, the Nobel is for a writer's whole work, and the Jnanpith is India's own. The fourth asks for a first or a year, such as the first Indian woman to win the Booker or the year of Midnight's Children. Two standing traps are worth naming: Anita Desai against her daughter Kiran Desai, and Charlotte Bronte against Emily Bronte.
Important Facts
| Oliver Twist | Charles Dickens, published in parts from 1837 |
|---|---|
| Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four | George Orwell, 1945 and 1949 |
| Pride and Prejudice | Jane Austen, 1813 |
| Wuthering Heights | Emily Bronte, 1847, her only novel |
| Gulliver's Travels | Jonathan Swift |
| Robinson Crusoe | Daniel Defoe |
| The Old Man and the Sea | Ernest Hemingway |
| Midnight's Children | Salman Rushdie, Booker Prize 1981 |
| The God of Small Things | Arundhati Roy, Booker Prize 1997 |
| The Inheritance of Loss | Kiran Desai, Booker Prize 2006 |
| The White Tiger | Aravind Adiga, Booker Prize 2008 |
| Interpreter of Maladies | Jhumpa Lahiri, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2000 |
| The Guide | R. K. Narayan, set in Malgudi |
| Train to Pakistan | Khushwant Singh |
| Nobel Prize in Literature, Indian connections | Rudyard Kipling 1907, Rabindranath Tagore 1913, V. S. Naipaul 2001 |
Practice MCQs on this topic
Who is the author of the book named "Oliver Twist"?
- A.Benazir Habib
- B.Charles Dickens
- C.Paul Kennedy
- D.Eric Segal
Show answer
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.
Read the full explanation →Who among the following is the author of the book 'Unaccustomed Earth'?
- A.Shobha De
- B.Arundhati Roy
- C.Anita Nair
- D.Jhumpa Lahiri
Show answer
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.
Read the full explanation →Who among the following is the author of the book 'Unfinished: A Memoir'?
- A.Alia Bhatt
- B.Priyanka Chopra Jonas
- C.Deepika Padukone
- D.Katrina Kaif
Show answer
Unfinished, published in 2021, is her memoir, written in English, and it recounts her school years in India and the United States, her win at a beauty pageant and her move from Hindi films to work abroad.
Read the full explanation →Who has written the book The End of India?
- A.Dr. Manmohan Singh
- B.Salman Rushdie
- C.Shashi Tharoor
- D.Khushwant Singh
Show answer
The End of India, published in 2003, is his book of essays written in English on communal violence and the danger it poses to the idea of India.
Read the full explanation →The novel 'Midnight's Children', which won the Booker Prize in 1981, was written by
- A.Vikram Seth
- B.Salman Rushdie
- C.Amitav Ghosh
- D.V. S. Naipaul
Show answer
Midnight's Children came out in 1981 and tells the story of children born at the hour of India's independence.
Read the full explanation →'The God of Small Things' was written by which author?
- A.Kiran Desai
- B.Anita Desai
- C.Arundhati Roy
- D.Kamala Markandaya
Show answer
The God of Small Things, published in 1997, is set in Kerala and won the Booker Prize the same year, making her the first Indian woman to receive that award.
Read the full explanation →The novel 'Animal Farm' was written by
- A.Aldous Huxley
- B.George Orwell
- C.H. G. Wells
- D.Thomas Hardy
Show answer
Animal Farm, published in 1945, is a short novel in which farm animals drive out their owner and set up their own rule, which soon turns into the tyranny they had overthrown.
Read the full explanation →Who wrote the novel 'Pride and Prejudice'?
- A.Charlotte Bronte
- B.Emily Bronte
- C.Jane Austen
- D.George Eliot
Show answer
Pride and Prejudice was published in 1813 and follows Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy through the manners and marriages of English country society.
Read the full explanation →'The White Tiger', which won the Booker Prize in 2008, was written by
- A.Aravind Adiga
- B.Kiran Desai
- C.Amitav Ghosh
- D.Jhumpa Lahiri
Show answer
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.
Read the full explanation →The only novel written by Emily Bronte is
- A.Jane Eyre
- B.Wuthering Heights
- C.Middlemarch
- D.Villette
Show answer
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.
Read the full explanation →Who is the author of the novel 'The Guide', set in the town of Malgudi?
- A.Mulk Raj Anand
- B.Raja Rao
- C.R. K. Narayan
- D.Ruskin Bond
Show answer
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.
Read the full explanation →Jhumpa Lahiri's story collection 'Interpreter of Maladies' won which of the following awards?
- A.Booker Prize
- B.Nobel Prize in Literature
- C.Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
- D.Jnanpith Award
Show answer
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.
Read the full explanation →Frequently Asked Questions
Which Indian writers have won the Booker Prize?
Five writers of Indian origin have won it: V. S. Naipaul for In a Free State in 1971, Salman Rushdie for Midnight's Children in 1981, Arundhati Roy for The God of Small Things in 1997, Kiran Desai for The Inheritance of Loss in 2006 and Aravind Adiga for The White Tiger in 2008.
What is the difference between the Booker Prize and the Pulitzer Prize?
The Booker Prize is a British award given each year for a novel written in English. The Pulitzer Prize is an American award, administered at Columbia University, and is given in journalism, letters, drama and music, with separate prizes for fiction and for general non-fiction.
Who wrote under the pen names George Orwell and George Eliot?
George Orwell was the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair, the author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. George Eliot was the pen name of Mary Ann Evans, who wrote Silas Marner, Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss. Mark Twain, similarly, was Samuel Clemens.
Where is Malgudi, and who created it?
Malgudi is an imaginary town in south India created by R. K. Narayan, and it is the setting of Swami and Friends, The English Teacher, The Guide and the stories collected as Malgudi Days. No such town exists on a map.
Which three writers began Indian English fiction?
Mulk Raj Anand, R. K. Narayan and Raja Rao, who published their first novels in the nineteen thirties, are named together as the founders of the Indian novel in English: Untouchable, Swami and Friends and Kanthapura belong to them in that order.
Was Rabindranath Tagore's Nobel Prize given for an English book?
Tagore wrote Gitanjali in Bengali and then rendered the poems into English himself. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913, the first Asian to do so, and it was the English version that carried the work to readers outside India.
Sources
- The Booker Prize winners and history — The Booker Prize Foundation
- Prize Winners by Category — The Pulitzer Prizes, Columbia University
- Sahitya Akademi Awards for Writing in English — Sahitya Akademi
