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Books and Authors Quiz Questions with Answers
Books and Authors Quiz Part 1
1. Who was the author of the book Ulysses?
Answer: James Joyce.
The author James Joyce wrote the book Ulysses in 1922. This is an important book in its own way because it broke the norm of writing about normal situations by using a stream-of-consciousness style of writing. The style used by James Joyce was so popular that this technique was later mimicked by many authors. Ulysses is also very important because it is one of the most famous works written about a city; Dublin, Ireland.
Joyce’s style of writing was influenced by his exposure to different languages which he learned as a youth and his work as a translator. He was fluent in German, Italian and French and could read Greek and Latin classics.
2. Who was the author of the book War and Peace?
Answer: Leo Tolstoy.
Leo Tolstoy wrote War and Peace in just 20 years.
In his own words:
—I started writing on the first of September 1866. On the 19th of March 1869, I put down the last words, “The End.”—I spent much more than 20 years on it, I spent all my life on it.—Well, there you have a fact. I can’t say exactly what I wrote each day but I have kept a diary and can see approximately how many days fall to each year.
3. Who was the author of the book Complete Poems?
Answer: Giacomo Leopardi.
Giacomo Leopardi wrote Complete Poems in the early nineteenth century, when Italian was a language known and used almost exclusively in Italy. As a consequence, his poetry was almost completely unknown to an English-language audience until a translation of his ‘Complete Poems’, edited by Jonathan Galassi and Michael Palma, was published in 2007. Leopardi is one of the greatest lyric poets in the history of Italian literature.
4. Who was the author of the book King Lear?
Answer: William Shakespeare.
King Lear was written between 1603 and 1606 by William Shakespeare. It is believed that the play is based on legends about the legendary King Leir of ancient Britain, who is said to have lived about eight centuries before Christ at the time of the expulsion of Trojan immigrants from Britain. “Lear” was not only a king but also a member of the royal family – he was his own grandson. The plot tells how old king Lear must divide his kingdom among his daughters according to his will.
5. Who was the author of the book Beloved?
Answer: Toni Morrison.
The award-winning novel by Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison (Song of Solomon), Beloved is an emotionally charged literary masterpiece. Sethe – a former slave – lives with her daughter Denver and son Buglar in Cincinnati in 1873. Haunted by the past, she has tried to make a new life for herself and her children.
6. Who was the author of the book Midnight’s Children?
Answer: Salman Rushdie.
Salman Rushdie was born in 1947 in Bombay, India. He is a well-known author and many of his books have become best sellers around the world. Midnight’s Children is a story of India at the time when it became a free country after 350 years of English rule. It follows the story of Saleem Sinai, who could be seen as a typical man from that period. He lived his life under British rule, but when India got its independence, he had to change his way of thinking and find new ways to live his life.
7. Who was the author of the book The Book of Disquiet?
Answer: Fernando Pessoa.
The Book of Disquiet is a collection of writings and excerpts by Fernando Pessoa, published in 1983. The book is written in the first person. It is divided into three parts: “Sensations”, “Images” and “The Book of Disquiet”. In an introductory note to the English translation, Richard Zenith writes that he considers it to be a “manifesto of modernism”. The writing style of Pessoa’s preface (“lying down, eyes shut”), with its stream-of-consciousness thoughts about the acts of writing and reading, would later be used by many postmodern authors.
The original publication date was 13 April 1985, two days after Pessoa’s death.
8. Who was the author of the book Remembrance of Things Past?
Answer: Marcel Proust.
In Remembrance of Things Past, Marcel Proust’s style is very descriptive of the surroundings. He describes what he or his character feels toward things and other people. He uses sensory details to describe the setting and the characters. The main character in the book is a man named Marcel who goes through life trying to remember everything in detail because death is just around the corner for him. The story takes place in Paris, France around the year 1900 when many people were going through changes socially and physically. This book includes wealthy aristocrats, servants, gay men, lesbians (unknown term at this time) etc.
9. Who was the author of the book Season of Migration to the North?
Answer: Tayeb Salih.
Season of Migration to the North has been described as one of the most notable novels of modern Arabic literature. It is a love story set in an unnamed Arab country during a time when political and social turmoil rippled through society. The book was first published in English in 1978 and was banned in Sudan. The background to the story is a warrior tradition that is no longer practical due to industrialization and development.
10. Who was the author of the book 1984?
Answer: George Orwell.
George Orwell wrote 1984 as a reaction and warning to the current political environment. The book was written in 1948 but can be applied directly to modern 21st century America. Orwell’s novel portrays many parallels between his imaginary world of Oceania, and the current world in which we live today: constant surveillance, false reality created by the government, and an all-powerful leader with complete control over his people. It has been said before that if one takes Orwell’s 1984 and removes any references to time or setting, one essentially has today’s America. This may seem shocking but everything about 1984 perfectly describes our own society from George W. Bush’s famous quote to “You’re either with us, or against us”, to the events of September 11th and the government’s reaction to it.
11. Who was the author of the book Oedipus the King?
Answer: Sophocles.
Oedipus the King, one of the oldest Greek tragedies, is a play about the suffering of man. The play has many different themes, but the main theme is fate: whether or not it controls our lives. By only reading Oedipus the King before watching this movie, I believed that fate controlled our lives. At first, after seeing The Serpent and the Rainbow and knowing what was going to happen in Oedipus the King, I thought that everything bad that happened to Oedipus was caused by fate: something bigger than us controlling everything we do.
12. Who was the author of the book Moby Dick?
Answer: Herman Melville.
It tells the story of a young sailor named Ishmael who leaves his hometown to join an American whaling ship, the Pequod, once the town’s chief industry and now past its prime. The ship’s captain, Ahab, leads his crew on a quest for revenge against a white whale (thus Moby Dick) that destroyed Ahab’s ship and bit off one of his legs. In the end only Ishmael survives to tell the tale when he returns to his hometown in New England.
The book was published in November 1851 and received mixed reviews from contemporary critics.
Books and Authors Quiz Part 2
13. Who was the author of the book The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories?
Answer: Leo Tolstoy.
A man named Ivan Ilyich lives his life doing evil to others and to himself. When he is given a terminal diagnosis, he realizes the error of his ways and seeks forgiveness from those whom he has wronged. He also comes to believe in a better world beyond this life. At the end, he dies peacefully after receiving forgiveness from all whom he has wronged.
Main Themes: Death, Secular Worldview vs. Christian Worldview, Sin and Forgiveness
14. Who was the author of the book Diary of a Madman and Other Stories?
Answer: Lu Xun.
This book is a collection of short stories written by Lu Xun, a well-known modern Chinese writer. The stories were created between the years 1920 and 1931. This book introduces eight stories of Lu Xun, in which there are themes about family love, friendship, social welfare and so on. The stories are very interesting to read as they have been translated into English for people who are not familiar with the Chinese language to understand.
15. Who was the author of the book To the Lighthouse?
Answer: Virginia Woolf.
The book was published in 1927. The novel follows the Ramsay family and their friends. Mrs. Ramsay dies at the end of the novel.
The story is set on a summer holiday on a fictional island in Scotland, called Lighthouse Island by Mrs. Ramsay, in 1910 and then again during the late 1920s near London, England, where Mrs. Ramsay died at the end of World War I.
16. Who was the author of the book Zorba the Greek?
Answer: Nikos Kazantzakis.
Zorba the Greek is a classic of twentieth-century literature.[1] It is a moving tale of an unlikely friendship between an introspective, educated young man and a passionate Greek peasant. The novel is an eloquent celebration of the life force and wild beauty of the people and landscape of Greece.
The book was first published in 1946, but was not widely noticed until it won the National Book Award for non-fiction in 1952.
17. Who was the author of the book The Castle Bohemia?
Answer: Franz Kafka.
The novel tells of K’s futile journey, ordered by a letter received from the authorities, to the village of his birth. It is a tale that plays with language and meaning, leading its readers into an increasingly absurd labyrinth. The Castle, though ostensibly about a man looking for work and later citizenship in an imaginary country called Klammhaus (Castle House), is really about the absurdity of life itself.
The Castle was written after Kafka’s Diaries convinced critics that he was much less pessimistic than his writing generally suggests. After all, he remained active and productive until he died at age forty-one (in 1924).
18. Who was the author of the book A Doll’s House?
Answer: Henrik Ibsen.
Ibsen’s first major play to be performed outside of Norway, A Doll’s House remains one of the world’s most performed dramas. It is a masterpiece of realistic drama in which a husband and wife face the consequences of social constraints on women’s roles. When Nora Helmer realizes that she has been living in name only under her husband Torvald’s name and responsible for nothing, she leaves her husband and children.
19. Who was the author of the book The Devil to Pay in the Backlands?
Answer: Joao Guimaraes Rosa.
If you are planning to read The Devil to Pay in the Backlands by Joao Guimaraes Rosa, then I am afraid that you will need a translator or a good dictionary since this book is written in Portuguese. This book is not an easy read, but it is an excellent read. This book is about the life of Euclides da Cunha, who was a geographer and writer. In this story he tells about his life and the people he knew in Brazil during the late 19th century. (Main idea/author’s purpose) This book has many stories about Euclides da Cunha’s life, and how all of that was affecting his writing.
20. Who was the author of the book Memoirs of Hadrian?
Answer: Marguerite Yourcenar.
Memoirs of Hadrian is a historic novel written in the 20th century by Marguerite Yourcenar. She was an American-French writer born in Chania, Crete. In 1959 she was awarded the Prix Goncourt for Memoirs of Hadrian: An Entertainment, which is an adaptation of her original work. The book is set from 117 to 137 A.D., and it’s about Emperor Hadrian’s early life, education and time as commander of the armies stationed on the Lower Rhine.
21. Who was the author of the book The Aeneid?
Answer: Virgil.
It was started in 19 BC and took the author ten years to complete. The Aeneid is actually a second main work of fiction to be written after the first, The Georgics, which was completed in 30 BC. This epic story has been told many times about the life of Aeneas, who is also known as Venus or Dumno. His father is Anchises and his mother is Venus.
In this poem, Aeneas moves from Troy after its destruction by evil forces, such as Greek soldiers hired by Priam’s wife and his sons. These sons are harming their own people for their own greed of power.
22. Who was the author of the book Confessions of Zeno?
Answer: Italo Svevo.
Confessions of Zeno is the first modern novel in English from a European master and a brilliant, hilarious portrait of an obsessive intellectual. In its unprecedented mix of introspection and irony, the novel is a profound exploration of the dark side of reason.
Italo Svevo (1861–1928) was an Italian author, best known for his novel Confessions of Zeno (1923), which has been called the first modern European novel. He was also an accomplished playwright, journalist, and poet. He was born Italo Svevo in Trieste to parents from Ferrara. Although he spoke Italian as a child, he grew up learning German and French as well as his native tongue. His education was peripatetic; he attended a variety of schools in Trieste, Istria, Geneva and Padua.
23. Who was the author of the book Mathnawi?
Answer: Jalal ad-din Rumi.
The most important work of Persian Sufi poetry is “Mathnawi”. This is a collection of 6500 verses, each with 6 lines. It was written by Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, goes by the name of Rumi, who lived from 1207 to 1273 in Konya (in Anatolia). He was born in Balkh, which is now in Afghanistan. His father was a man of vast learning and an accomplished poet. During his lifetime Rumi acquired knowledge of religion, law, literature and mysticism. His father died when he was quite young and shortly after that the family moved to Iran. He became very familiar with Arabic literature at an early age.
24. Who was the author of the book Buddenbrook?
Answer: Thomas Mann.
“Buddenbrooks” is set in the late nineteenth century in the fictional city Lübeck, on the Baltic Sea. It tells the story of a wealthy merchant family which over three generations goes bankrupt and declines in society as a result of snobbery and a narrow worldview. Mann began writing it in 1899 and completed it in 1901.
25. Who was the author of the book Sons and Lovers?
Answer: D.H. Lawrence.
Sons and Lovers, D. H. Lawrence’s third novel, was originally published in 1913. The novel is based on the author’s own childhood and youth in northern England’s coal-mining district around the turn of the century. Lawrence wrote the book while working as a teacher in Croydon, Surrey, using his student Murry as a model for Paul Morel, the book’s protagonist. Sons and Lovers is considered one of Lawrence’s finest works; it demonstrates many of his main themes–his concern with human relationships and social class, his interest in heredity, and his exploration of sex and repression (see Volcanic Eruptions: D. H. Lawrence).
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