V. S. Naipaul, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001, is the author of which of the following?
- A.The God of Small Things
- B.A House for Mr Biswas
- C.Midnight's Children
- D.The White Tiger
Correct answer
Explanation
The correct answer is B, A House for Mr Biswas. Naipaul was born in Trinidad to a family of Indian origin, settled in Britain and drew on both worlds in A House for Mr Biswas, A Bend in the River and the Indian travel books An Area of Darkness and India: A Million Mutinies Now. Option A, The God of Small Things, is Arundhati Roy's novel and won the Booker Prize in 1997, not the Nobel. Option C, Midnight's Children, is Salman Rushdie's novel and also a Booker winner, in 1981. Option D, The White Tiger, is Aravind Adiga's Booker winning novel of 2008. The distinction the examiner is testing is between the Nobel Prize, which is awarded for a body of work, and the Booker Prize, which is awarded for a single novel.
Read the full article: Nobel Prize in Literature: Laureates and Their Works
Practice Questions
View allFor which collection of poems was Rabindranath Tagore awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913?
- A.Gora
- B.Gitanjali
- C.Chokher Bali
- D.Ghare Baire
Show answer
The Swedish Academy cited the profoundly sensitive and beautiful verse of Gitanjali, which Tagore had himself rendered into English as Song Offerings and published in 1912 with an introduction by W. B. Yeats; the prize made him the first Asian and the first non-European laureate in any Nobel category.
Read the full explanation →Who wrote the book 'The Golden Boat'?
- A.Satyajit Ray
- B.Munshi Prem Chand
- C.Rabindranath Tagore
- D.RK Narayan
Show answer
The Golden Boat is the English title of Sonar Tari, the Bengali collection of poems Tagore published in 1894, nineteen years before his Nobel Prize, and its title poem is among the best known in modern Bengali verse.
Read the full explanation →Which institution selects the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature?
- A.The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
- B.The Swedish Academy
- C.The Norwegian Nobel Committee
- D.The Karolinska Institute
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Alfred Nobel's will of 1895 named a different body for each prize, and for literature it named the Academy in Stockholm, founded in 1786 to guard the Swedish language, which still announces the laureate each October.
Read the full explanation →Who was the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature?
- A.Selma Lagerlof
- B.Pearl S. Buck
- C.Toni Morrison
- D.Grazia Deledda
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The Swedish writer won the prize in 1909, eight years after the prize was first given, and she was later also the first woman elected to the Swedish Academy itself.
Read the full explanation →Which writer refused the Nobel Prize in Literature awarded to him in 1964?
- A.Albert Camus
- B.Boris Pasternak
- C.Jean-Paul Sartre
- D.Samuel Beckett
Show answer
The French philosopher and novelist declined the prize of 1964, explaining that a writer must not allow himself to be transformed into an institution and that he had always refused official honours.
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