Amrita Pritam, who received the Jnanpith Award in 1981, wrote mainly in which language?
- A.Urdu
- B.Bengali
- C.Punjabi
- D.Assamese
Correct answer
Explanation
The correct answer is C, Punjabi. Amrita Pritam is the best known woman writer of modern Punjabi, and the Jnanpith Award of 1981 was given to her for the Punjabi poetry collection Kagaz Te Canvas. She had already become the first woman to win the Sahitya Akademi Award for Punjabi, in 1956, for Sunehade, and her novel Pinjar, on the abduction of women during the Partition, was later filmed. Option A is wrong because the Urdu woman writer of the Jnanpith list is Qurratulain Hyder, honoured in 1989 for Aag Ka Darya. Option B is wrong because the Bengali names in this list are Ashapurna Devi and Mahasweta Devi. Option D is wrong because the Assamese laureate is Indira Goswami, also known as Mamoni Raisom Goswami, who received the Jnanpith in 2000.
Read the full article: Famous Indian Women Writers and Their Works: Exam Notes
Practice Questions
View allWho was the first woman to be awarded the Jnanpith Award?
- A.Amrita Pritam
- B.Mahadevi Verma
- C.Ashapurna Devi
- D.Mahasweta Devi
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She received the Jnanpith Award in 1976 for the Bengali novel Pratham Pratishruti, the first part of a trilogy that follows three generations of women in a Bengali household, and she was the first woman to receive the award in its history.
Read the full explanation →The poetry collection The Golden Threshold was written by which Indian writer?
- A.Toru Dutt
- B.Sarojini Naidu
- C.Kamala Das
- D.Pandita Ramabai
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The Golden Threshold, published in 1905, was her first collection of poems in English, and it was followed by The Bird of Time in 1912 and The Broken Wing in 1917.
Read the full explanation →Which novel won Arundhati Roy the Booker Prize in 1997?
- A.The Inheritance of Loss
- B.Tomb of Sand
- C.The God of Small Things
- D.A Suitable Boy
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Arundhati Roy's first novel, set in Ayemenem in Kerala and built around the twins Rahel and Estha, won the Booker Prize in 1997, the fiftieth year of Indian independence.
Read the full explanation →Interpreter of Maladies, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000, was written by whom?
- A.Jhumpa Lahiri
- B.Kiran Desai
- C.Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- D.Anita Desai
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Interpreter of Maladies is a collection of nine short stories about Indian and Indian-American lives, and it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000, making Lahiri the first writer of Indian origin to win that prize for fiction.
Read the full explanation →The first book originally written in Hindi to win the International Booker Prize was:
- A.Zindaginama
- B.Ret Samadhi
- C.Pratham Pratishruti
- D.Aag Ka Darya
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Geetanjali Shree's novel Ret Samadhi, translated into English by Daisy Rockwell as Tomb of Sand, won the International Booker Prize in 2022 and became the first book written in Hindi, and the first from any Indian language, to take that prize.
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