A Literary Tour of the World Trivia Quiz

'The Sun Also Rises' is Ernest Hemingway's first novel, published in 1926. The settings are Paris and, primarily, Pamplona in Spain, the country indicated on the map.

The story was partly based on the author's own experiences, living in France between the two World Wars and some of the people he came across. The two main characters in the novel are Jake Barnes, an American expatriate, and Lady Brett Ashley, an Englishwoman living in Paris. She is depicted as a promiscuous divorcee who has various love affairs during the book, while Barnes has suffered a war wound which has left him impotent. The group's visit to Pamplona for the running of the bulls is pivotal, as Brett has yet another affair with a young matador. Although the pair love each other, her need for sex and his inability to provide it means the relationship is doomed.

The book was written by Sheila Burnford, a Scottish author who set her story in Canada. The book was published in 1961, becoming widely known when Disney made a film of it in 1963. Burnford herself had lived in Canada with her husband and children, with the animals in her story based on their pets.

The plot involves three pets owned by a family living in the province of Ontario. When the family leaves temporarily for work purposes, they board the animals with a family friend who lives some three hundred miles (480 km) away. Following a misunderstanding, the animals, consisting of a young Labrador dog, an older bull terrier dog and a Siamese cat, believe they have been abandoned and set off for home. The tale follows the dangers and near misses of their journey, battling the elements and wild animals not to mention unfriendly humans. By perseverance and mutual support the three animals reach their destination.

This novel was written by Alan Paton and was published in 1948. It is set in a pre-apartheid South Africa, the author's native country.

The story involves a Zulu priest, a Christian, who goes to Johannesburg from his village to help a neighbour's sister and his own son, who had undertaken the same task but never returned. The priest, Stephen Kumalo, finds Gertrude (the missing sister) and discovers that she has resorted to prostitution and has a young child. He persuades her to return to the village. His son has been involved in a robbery in which a man died, and is eventually executed. Stephen finds his son's pregnant wife and she also goes to the village with him.

The other strand of the story is the philanthropic work of James Jarvis, the white father of the murdered man, who had been active in helping the black population of South Africa. He decides to continue this work which brings him into contact with Stephen, who needs help for his village. The two men draw close through the tragedy of having both lost their sons.

The novel is acclaimed for demonstrating the roots of what became apartheid soon after as an official policy of the South African government.

First published in 1966, this novel by Paul Scott is the first in the set of four books known as the 'Raj Quartet'. They are set in India during World War II, the final days of British control in India, which became an independent country in 1947. The subsequent novels are 'The Day of the Scorpion' (1968), 'The Towers of Silence' (1971) and 'A Division of the Spoils' (1975).

The first novel is set in 1942 when the Japanese have captured what was then Burma and there were real fears that India could follow. Gandhi is also active in the movement to end British rule. The plot focusses on various characters including Merrick, a police officer who is a bigot, and Daphne Manners, an English woman who falls in love with an Indian and suffers badly as a result. The older British characters tend to adhere to the status quo while younger ones are generally portrayed as being more sympathetic to the idea of Indian independence.

Originally written in Danish by Peter Høeg, and published in 1992, the title I've used is the name given to the British publication, from 1993. In the USA, the title is 'Smilla's Sense of Snow'.

The story is set in Denmark, in a region of the capital city Copenhagen, where Smilla Qaaviqaaq Jaspersen is living. Her father is Danish and her mother (who has already died before the novel begins) was of Greenlandic Inuit heritage. Smilla grew up in Greenland and has an innate understanding of snow and its qualities. When a young Greenlandic boy's death is accepted as an accident - a fall from a roof - Smilla realises that someone else was involved and decides to investigate. This brings her into danger, with the action moving to an island near Greenland, as she uncovers a conspiracy and the villain of the story. The ending of the novel is left ambiguous.

Fannie Flagg wrote this novel, which was published in 1987. The setting is Alabama, one of the southern states of the USA

The story is about a woman, Evelyn Couch, who is approaching her menopause years. While visiting a nursing home where her mother-in-law is living, she meets Ninny Threadgoode, an elderly woman who tells her about her life running the cafe of the title. Hearing of the past events inspires Evelyn to make changes in her own life and become more independent.

This 1957 novel was written by the prolific British author Nevil Shute who had moved to live in Australia by the time the book was published.

The plot involves a nuclear war which has wiped out life in the northern hemisphere. In the southern half of the world, life continues in countries such as South Africa, New Zealand and Australia, where the novel is set. The winds of the world are gradually bringing radiation to the south, and the people still alive know that they will eventually succumb to radiation poisoning. The government has provided a means of committing suicide to everyone to avoid a lingering death. Shute focusses his story on a mixed cast of characters and how they deal with their unavoidable fate.

This is the third novel published by John Fowles and is set in Lyme Regis, a seaside town in the county of Dorset in the south west of England. The story is set in the nineteenth century in the early years of Queen Victoria's reign.

The main character in the novel is Sarah Woodruff, who is believed to have been involved with a French man who abandoned her and returned to France to marry. As a result of this supposed affair, Sarah is known by the title of the book and, less politely, as 'The French Lieutenant's Whore'. When Charles Smithson visits the region with his fiancée he becomes fascinated by Sarah and meets her on several occasions. Fowles then leaves the development of the story to the reader, with an unnamed narrator offering three versions of how the relationship might end.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a Nigerian herself, based her novel before and around the civil war which took place in her home country in the late 1960s. It is also known as the Biafran War after the region of Biafra which declared itself independent , setting off a conflict which lasted for two and a half years. Adichie's story was published in 2006.

The novel begins prior to the war and introduces the main characters, mostly Nigerians but with one African-American woman and an English writer who becomes immersed in the idea of the new country. The war causes devastation to many of these characters, some of whom are displaced and end up in refugee camps which have no supplies or food. Another character, a houseboy named Ugwu, is forced to join the Biafran army where he is forced to carry out killings and sexual attacks on women.

'Empire of the Sun' was written by J G Ballard and published in 1984. Like most of the other novels in the quiz, it has been used as inspiration for a film. The setting is China, particularly Shanghai, during World War II.

The beginning of the story takes place after the Pearl Harbor attack on Hawaii in late 1941 which was followed by the Japanese taking control of the Shanghai International Settlement. This settlement was occupied by British and American as an enclave. The real life event of this invasion inspired the novel's depiction of a young British boy, Jim Graham, who finds himself separated from his parents in the chaos. After some time scavenging, Jim surrenders to the Japanese army and finds himself in an internment camp called the Lunghua Civil Assembly Centre. The story, based on the author's personal experiences, covers how Jim manages to survive and his ambivalent feelings toward his captors before the ending of the war reunites him with his family.