"Euphoria" by Lily King Trivia Quiz

Answer: New Guinea

This book covers, with some fictionalizing, Margaret Mead's 1933 entry to areas of New Guinea rarely visited by outsiders. In the story, as well as in real life, she settled with a group of people who live deep in the island up the Sepik river.

New Guinea is an island north of Australia that is part of the Malay archipelago. It is more recently known as Papua.

Answer: One in war, one by suicide

Bankson was the youngest of three brothers born into a long-standing British family. The vast majority of his relatives and ancestors had been scientists and scholars, so he and his brothers were expected to do the same. Everyone was devastated when the eldest brother, John, was killed in the line of duty in World War I.

A few years later, Bankson's other brother, Martin, committed suicide, probably because their father didn't approve of his interest in being a poet rather than a scientist. By the time Bankson was old enough to choose a career, his father had passed, but Bankson knew that his father would not entirely approve of his choice of the new field of anthropology.

When Bankson meets Nellie, he finds himself talking about his brothers more than he had before.

Answer: Local men saw and pulled him out of the water

Bankson loved part of his career - he loved being in the tropics and being away from the expectations of his family in England. But he was overwhelmed with the loneliness of being in the field without loved ones. His suicide attempt was cut short when local villagers pulled him out of the water.

They didn't realize he was trying to commit suicide, and laughed at him for trying to go swimming with stones in his pockets.

Answer: Christmas

When Nellie and Fen came in from the field, they didn't realize that it was Christmas Eve. They had had a run of bad experiences in the previous year and a half and had decided to leave the area and find another part of the world to study, so they took the next transport ship available to the Government Station in Angoram, a city in the north-western part of the island. Bankson had come in to the same station to celebrate the holiday.

This is where all three met and Bankson convinced them to stay in New Guinea.

Answer: Tam

Nellie and Fen were pleased with the Tam people, who lived near a large lake with a beach. Fen wanted a place with high ground that would never flood and Nellie wanted a culture that valued art and wasn't violent. The Tam hadn't been Bankson's first choice, because they were seven hours' by canoe from his own station, but it was clear the tribe was a good match for Nellie and Fen.

Answer: Malaria

After making sure that Nellie and Fen were happy with their choice of people to stay with, Bankson went back to his own area and remained away in what he thought was a polite gesture. After seven weeks, he couldn't wait any more and came to visit them, only to be hit with a sudden flare-up of malaria.

They nursed him back to health over many weeks in their own hut. This also gave Nellie and Bankson more time to get to know each other.

Answer: Bread or wine

Nellie had read a poem by Amy Lowell that described how a lover may start out with being like wine -- thrilling and sensual -- and then become like a bread, familiar and essential. She told Bankson that all of her lovers were wine to her, but she was bread to everyone else. Eventually, she writes in her journal that in Bankson she had found both wine and bread in one person.

Answer: Grid mapping of human temperament by culture

The anthropologists were inspired by their joint interest and over the course of one fevered night and day, they created a four-square grid that mapped temperament. The northern squares involved success, power, and aggression, while the southern half pointed to empathy, sensitivity, and peace. The western side was organized, linear, and efficient, while the eastern side was creative, spiritual, and non-binary. The grid could be applied both to cultures and to individuals. The anthropologists mapped Germans as Northwesterners, Italians as Southeasterners.

In real life, Mead, her real then-husband Reo Fortune, and the British anthropologist Gregory Bateson, did create a grid that she later called her squares theory. It was never published.

Answer: It had written language on it

Fen had briefly seen the flute from the shaman in the Mumbanyo tribe. He was shocked to see it contained handwriting on it, writing that the shaham explained had verbs, nouns, and other parts of speech. This was astounding to Fen as, at that time, there was no record of any people in that entire area having a written language.

He was sure that if he could bring the flute to the academic world, he would be valued as much as Nellie was.

Answer: Tam blamed them for death of favorite son

Nellie was pregnant, but that's not what why she, Fen, and Bankson left abruptly. Fen had taken the people's favorite, prodigal son, a young man named Xambun, to travel to the Mumbanyo to retrieve the sacred flute. Xambun had been killed during the incident, and when his tribe saw his dead body, they were going to turn on the anthropologists. With Bankson's quick thinking, they left just in time, fleeing in his small boat.

They sent for their belongings later.