Nobel and Booker Winners from India: List and MCQs

The correct answer is D, 6. The Nobel Prize is awarded every year in six categories: Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, Peace and Economic Sciences. The first five were named in the will of Alfred Nobel and have been given since 1901, while the prize in Economic Sciences was instituted by the Sveriges Riksbank in 1968 and awarded for the first time in 1969.

Option A, 5, is the number of categories in Nobel's own will and is therefore the strongest distractor, but the count asked for today includes economics. Option B, 7, is one more than the list and matches no prize category. Option C, 4, would leave out two of the sciences altogether. The Peace Prize among the six is decided in Norway and presented at Oslo, while the other five are presented at Stockholm on 10 December each year.

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 A, Mother Teresa. She was born at Skopje, came to India as a nun, took Indian citizenship in 1948 and founded the Missionaries of Charity at Kolkata in 1950. The Nobel Peace Prize was given to her in 1979 for her work among the poorest of the poor, and she remains the only woman from India to have received it.

Option B, Nargis Dutt, was a film actress who was given the Padma Shri and was later a member of the Rajya Sabha, but she was never a Nobel laureate. Option C, Indira Gandhi, was Prime Minister of India and received the Bharat Ratna in 1971; no Indian Prime Minister has won the Nobel Peace Prize. Option D, Sarojini Naidu, called the Nightingale of India, was the first woman President of the Indian National Congress and the first woman Governor of a state, but she too won no Nobel Prize.

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, 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, The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy's first novel, set in Kerala and built around the childhood of the twins Rahel and Estha. It won the Booker Prize in 1997, the fiftieth year of India's independence, and made her the first Indian woman to win the award.

Option A, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, is Roy's second novel, published twenty years later in 2017, and it did not win the Booker. Option C, The Inheritance of Loss, is Kiran Desai's novel, which won the Booker in 2006. Option D, A Suitable Boy, is Vikram Seth's long novel of 1993; for all its fame it never won the Booker Prize, and it is put among the options for exactly that reason.

The correct answer is C, Midnight's Children, the novel about Saleem Sinai, born at the exact hour of India's independence, which won the Booker Prize in 1981. It was later chosen as the Booker of Bookers in 1993 and again as the Best of the Booker in 2008, the only novel to be honoured in that way twice.

Option A, The Satanic Verses, published in 1988, was shortlisted for the Booker but did not win it; it won the Whitbread Award for a novel. Option B, Shame, published in 1983, was also shortlisted and lost. Option D, The Moor's Last Sigh, of 1995, won the Whitbread Book of the Year. All three are Rushdie's works, so the year 1981 and the title Midnight's Children must be remembered together.

The correct answer is B, Aravind Adiga, whose first novel The White Tiger won the Booker Prize in 2008. The book is told as a set of letters written by Balram Halwai, a driver who rises from a poor village to become a businessman in Bangalore, and it was later made into a film.

Option A, Amitav Ghosh, has written The Shadow Lines, The Glass Palace and the Ibis trilogy and was the first English language writer to be given the Jnanpith Award, but he has not won the Booker. Option C, Chetan Bhagat, is a popular novelist whose books have been filmed, yet he has never been a Booker winner. Option D, Jhumpa Lahiri, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for her short story collection Interpreter of Maladies, which is a different prize and a different country.

The correct answer is C, The Inheritance of Loss, set partly in Kalimpong at the foot of the Himalayas and partly among Indian immigrants in New York. It won the Booker Prize in 2006, and Kiran Desai was at the time the youngest woman to have won the award.

Option A, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, is Kiran Desai's own first novel, published in 1998, which won the Betty Trask Award and not the Booker. Options B and D, Fasting, Feasting and Clear Light of Day, are novels by her mother Anita Desai, who was shortlisted for the Booker three times without ever winning it. The mother and daughter pair is a favourite of paper setters, so the two lists should be kept apart in your notes.

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 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, 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.