Name the Writer Trivia Quiz

Answer: Vainö Linna

All three are found in Linna's great collective epic of the last Finnish-Russian war, "Unknown Soldier" (1954). Waltari, Saarikoski and Tikkanen are other Finnish writers.

Answer: Saul Bellow

The gentlemen appear in "The Adventures of Augie March" (1953), "Humboldt's Gift" (1975), "More Die of Heartbreak" (1987), respectively. Bellow was Nobel Laureate in Literature in 1976.

Answer: Knut Hamsun

Heroes of "Mysteries", "Pan" and "Growth of the Soil", the last of which earned him the Nobel Prize. Hamsun was a pioneer of the modern novel, and his heroes - at least in early works - are erratic and distressed figures. Ibsen, Undset and Sandemose are other Norwegian writers.

Answer: Kurt Vonnegut

Heroes of "Bluebeard", "Slaughterhouse-Five" and "The Children's Crusade", "A Duty-Dance with Death" and "Jailbird".

Answer: Fyodor Dostoyevsky

From "The Idiot", "Crime and Punishment", and "The Gambler". This last novel was, by the way, written in one month in the midst of working with "Crime and Punishment" - Dostoyevsky had betted he could do it..

Answer: Honoré de Balzac

In Balzac's grand work of "The Human Comedy" the fictitious world remains the same from a novel to the other, meaning that plots are interwoven and characters appear in different stories. Lucien de Rubempré is at the center of "Lost Illusions", Rastignac of "Father Goriot", whereas Eugénie Grandet has a novel named after her.

Answer: Peter Carey

From "Jack Maggs", "Oscar and Lucinda", and "True History of the Kelly Gang" (both the last two won Carey the Booker Prize). Carey is Australian, as is Malouf. Thorpe and Amis are British.

Answer: Virginia Woolf

From "Mrs. Dalloway", "To the Lighthouse" and "Flush". The latter is poet Elizabeth Browning Barrett's cocker spaniel!

Answer: Michael Ondaatje

Almásy is better known as "The English Patient". Lewis is the protagonist of "In the Skin of a Lion", while the story of cornet-player Bolden is told in "Coming Through Slaughter". Ondaatje is Canadian, as is Atwood. Berger is British, Franzen American.

Answer: Paul Bowles

Port Moresby is the husband who dies in "The Sheltering Sky" (bizarrely, his name is also the capital of Papua New Guinea). Amar is the 15-year-old Moroccan of "The Spider's House", while Nelson Dyer is the protagonist of "Let It All Come Down". Bowles knew all the three other writers listed and shared house with Barnes in Tangier in the 30's.