Fictional Islands Trivia Quiz

Answer: Enid Blyton

Enid Blyton was a prolific children's author who enthralled generations of children despite literary criticism. The Famous Five (George (short for Georgina) and her cousins Julian, Dick and Anne, with dog Timmy, had a series of adventures over many books. In the first novel, "Five on a Treasure Island", we find out that George, who lived in Kirrin Cottage in Kirrin, and 'owns' an island, Kirrin Island in Kirrin Bay, undertook an adventure with her cousins looking for and finding shipwrecked treasure on Kirrin island.

It is believed that Blyton was inspired by two locations for Kirrin Island: the Isle of Purbeck and Brownsea Island, both in Poole Harbour in Dorset, where Blyton holidayed each year.

The photo depicts Brownsea island.

Answer: Lilliput

Lilliput and Blefuscu are two fictional islands from "Gulliver's Travels" (1726) written by Jonathan Swift. The two islands are adjacent to one another in the South Indian Ocean. Both are inhabited by tiny people who are about one-twelfth the size of human beings. The geographical location is given in great detail: "northwest of Van Diemen's Land" (Tasmania) at latitude 30°2'S, Likewise, the map depicts Lilliput and Blefuscu south of 'Hogs Island', off northwest Sumatra, and northwest of Van Diemen's Land". This location is not possible, Tasmania and Sumatra are 4200km apart and the description matched the location which corresponds to the location of Australia which was unknown to Great Britain at the time of writing. Nevertheless, the island setting is integral to a wonderful novel.

The photo shows a scene from the novel where the people of Lilliput are about 1/12 the size of Gulliver.

Answer: Robert Louis Stevenson

"Treasure Island" was originally titled "The Sea Cook: A Story for Boys" and was an adventure novel written by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson. The novel was originally published in serial form in 1881-82 in the children's magazine "Young Folks", under the title "Treasure Island or the Mutiny of the Hispaniola: written by "Captain George North". It was first published as a book in 1883 by Cassell & Co.

It could well be considered the archetype of the pirate novel: it had a significant influence on depictions of pirates in popular culture. Such elements as deserted tropical islands, treasure maps marked with an "X" (X marks the spot), and one-legged seamen with parrots on their shoulders were first depicted in this novel.

When republished as the novel "Treasure Island", this was Stevenson's first financial and critical success.

Answer: South Pacific Ocean

In 1896, British author H.G Wells published the science fiction novel "The Island of Doctor Moreau". Edward Prendick, the narrator, tells the story of being shipwrecked in the Pacific and rescued by a passing boat and taken to the South Pacific island home of Doctor Moreau, a mad scientist who creates human-like monster hybrids from animals using vivisection (a popular theme at the time). The novel's themes include human identity, human interference with nature, pain and cruelty and most importantly, moral responsibility. Whilst it is a work of science fiction, it read more like a horror story when read by this author at an impressionable age.

While the novel has been criticised for its lack of scientific basis for its plot, this has not deterred generations of young readers who became enthralled by the concepts purported by this novel.

The photo depicts a scene from the musical "South Pacific".

Answer: Agatha Christie

"And Then There Were None" (1939) is a murder mystery novel by the British writer Agatha Christie. This is the title that was released in the US. Its original title was taken from a children's counting song using a now-offensive word. It has also been known as "Ten Little Indians" in paperback form in the US.

The plot revolved around eight people invited to a small isolated island called Indian Island near the Devon coast. The host had not arrived and the guests were greeted by two servants. After the first meal, a recording was played to the guests indicating they have all killed another person. One by one the guests and servants are killed until no one is left alive. The police cannot solve the case, and we only find out what actually happened when a message in a bottle washed up on the Devonshire coast.

Agatha Christie described this novel as the most difficult of all her books to write. However, it became the world's best-selling mystery, with over 105 million copies sold. In 2016 the novel had been listed as the seventh best-selling title.

The photo shows the Orient Express, the setting for one of Ms Christie's other famous novels.

Answer: Jurassic Park

Michael Crichton could sure write a hit novel (and more than a few hit TV series as well). His scripts tend to be cautionary tales that combine contemporary technological achievements mashed with the undertones of ancient fables. His 1990 novel "Jurassic Park" was about genetically engineered dinosaurs in a modern world illustrating Chaos Theory. Islan Nublar was where this takes place, an island off the coast of Costa Rica. There are secondary themes such as the ethics, or lack of, in large corporations. The book was a best seller and so was the subsequent Spielberg movie with the same title. Perhaps the success of the movie should not be surprising given the novel was actually written from a completed screenplay that Crichton wrote in 1983.

The photo depicts Caleta Gonzalo, Chile which looks, according to the photographer, what he imagined Isla Nublar to look like.

Answer: Jaws

The rights to Peter Benchley's 1974 novel "Jaws" were sold to a Steven Spielberg company before it was released to the public. As such the release date of the novel and movie were very close together and there was an argument that the book was such a best seller because people bought the book after they saw the movie.

However, the book was a much more in-depth examination of the characters; in fact, none of the characters in the book was likeable. The novel was set in the town of Amity on Amity Island off the coast of Long Island, New York. Benchley based his novel on real events: the story was based on the 1916 New Jersey shark attacks when five people fell victim to sharks within two weeks. The town paid people to hunt down the shark as it was affecting tourism around the town. Benchley's Quint was based on Frank Mundus, a Montauk shark fisherman. Benchley extrapolated Mundus' experience in catching a huge great white shark off of the New York Long Island coast in his novel.

Answer: Greek islands

"The Guns of Navarone" is a 1957 WWII novel by Scottish writer Alistair McClean. The plot revolved around an Allied commando team's mission to destroy a seemingly well-defended German fortress on the fictitious island of Navarone. Tis was one of the Greek Islands that was a huge threat to Allied naval ships in the Aegean Sea, with over 1,200 isolated British Army soldiers marooned and awaiting rescue from behind the area defended by the German guns. The elite multicultural commando team had to climb up the daunting south face of Navarone's sheer cliffs to destroy the German guns.

The novel was made into a successful 1961 movie of the same name. It should be noted that "Force 10 from Navarone", the only sequel McLean wrote, was a continuation of the movie, not the book.

Answer: Hospital for the criminally insane

"Shutter Island" (2003) was a Dennis Lehane thriller which goes back to the fifties to tell the story of a U.S. Marshal who went to an isolated Massachusetts hospital for the criminally insane in Boston Harbor to investigate the apparent disappearance of a multiple-murderer patient. Dennis Lehane wrote this directly after "Mystic River" and wanted to write a "more taut thriller".

In a 2003 interview with Dave Welch from Powell's Books, Lehane said the novel was "an homage to gothic, but also an homage to B movies and pulp." Patrick Anderson raved in the Washington Post, when he reviewed the novel in the same year. "If we could bring back Edgar Allan Poe and equip him with today's postmodern bag of tricks, he might give us a tale as unexpected and unsettling as Shutter Island."
The novel had a killer ending that this reader did not see coming.

The book was made into a successful movie but in this reader's opinion the book was better.

The photo depicts the Massachusetts hospital that inspired the novel.

Answer: "The Mysterious Island" - Jules Verne

In Jules Verne's 1875 "The Mysterious Island", five prisoners of war escape during the Siege of Richmond, in Civil War Virginia, by hijacking a hydrogen-filled observation balloon. The balloon gets caught up in a storm and crash lands days later on a Pacific Ocean island 2500km/1600 mi east of New Zealand. They name it "Lincoln Island" in honour of Abraham Lincoln (they were, after all, Northern prisoners of war).

Robinson Crusoe was shipwrecked on an unnamed island off the coast of Venezuela which he called the Island of Despair.

In "Lord of the Flies" (1954), a plane undertaking a wartime evacuation crashed on an isolated island in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean, with the only survivors being a group of pre-teen boys.

In Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" (1932) protagonists Bernard and Helmholtz were exiled to an island in the Falklands for antisocial activity but the island, presumably one of the smaller ones, was not specified.

Jules Verne is depicted in the photo.