Pearl Buck Goes to China Trivia Quiz

Answer: San Juan, Puerto Rico

"The Rum Diary" was initially a narrative that a twenty-two year-old Thompson began writing in 1959 and a novel that he completed in the early 1960s. It wasn't discovered until the mid 1990s and was finally published in 1998. Set in a newspaper in San Juan, it focusses on a young journalist from New York seeking greener fields. This is a story filled with filled with lust, jealousy, violence and, of course, rum.

Thompson used some of his own experiences in the story, having left his newspaper job in New York to work for a sports paper in San Juan, a decision that did not pan out as initially desired. "The Rum Diary" would be adapted into a film in 2011, starring Johnny Depp.

Answer: Alejandro Selkirk Island, Chile

Jonathan Franzen had begun working on his fourth novel "Freedom" (2010), the follow-up to his highly successful and much praised "The Corrections" (2001), almost immediately after the publication of its predecessor. However, the going was slow. In a 2002 interview on "Charlie Rose" he expressed "I'm about a year of frustration and confusion into it..." when asked how he had progressed with it. The novel, about the lives of the Berglund family, continued to "drift".

In 2008, his close friend and author, David Foster Wallace, committed suicide and Franzen was deeply affected by the loss. He saw a connection between the "boredom" he was experiencing and the same "boredom" he felt was responsible for Wallace taking his own life, and chose to escape from it. An avid bird watcher, he ran away to Alejandro Selkirk Island, a place he described as "further away" and found the strength he needed to complete what has been described as his "Great American" novel.

Answer: Spain

Hemmingway was working for NANA (North American Newspaper Alliance) when he went to Spain to report on the Spanish Civil War. He worked alongside Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens, but their views on the war vastly differed. He rubbed shoulders with notables, such as ace fighter pilot Frank G. Tinker, was at the Battle of the Ebro, the last stand made by the Republican forces, and was among the last of the journalists to finally "cross the river".

He utilised his collective experiences here to chronicle the story of Robert Jordan, a young dynamiter, working with the Republican guerrillas in "For Whom the Bell Tolls" (1940).

The writing however, did not take place in one spot. Hemmingway commenced work on the novel while living in the Hotel Ambos Mundos in Havana, Cuba, then in Key West, Florida, before finalising it in Sun Valley, Idaho.

Answer: Train ride From Manchester, England

Rowling had spent the day in Manchester searching for an apartment, and boarded a train to head back to London, but the train was delayed. She let her thoughts drift and, suddenly, the idea for Harry Potter popped into her head. Then, the journey, not the destination, cast its spell upon her as she let her mind wander and her imagination sprout and the rest, as they say, is literary history.

Answer: St. Ives, Cornwall

Woolf's "To the Lighthouse" (1927) follows the Ramsay family and their visits to the Isle of Skye during a ten-year period from 1910 to 1920. Commentators have noted that Woolf seemed to draw on many of her own experiences in writing the novel, in particular her early years and the regular visits their family had made to St. Ives.

This was, notably, the happiest period in Virginia's life, but it came crashing down when her mother died. Woolf was thirteen at the time and endured the first of her mental breakdowns.

Her sister, Virginia Bell, who completed the artwork for the book's cover, indicated that reading sections of the novel that described Mrs Ramsay was akin to seeing their mother raised from the dead. (New York Times article by Daphne Merkin, 2004).

Answer: French Riviera

The initial inspiration for "The Great Gatsby" (1925), a tale of decadence and idealism that follows the mysterious Jay Gatsby and his infatuation with the debutante, Daisy Buchanan, is rooted in a number of parties that Fitzgerald attended along Long Island's North Shore.

However, Fitzgerald's attempts to write the novel were filled with frustration and progress was extremely slow. It took a move from one set of parties in Long Island to another set on the French Riviera to spark the creative juices and bring it to head.

Answer: Cartagena, Colombia

Márquez is from Colombia, but he is not from Cartagena. Born in Aracataca, Colombia, he moved to Sucre at an early age and was educated in Bogota. He began a career in journalism while he was at the National University of Colombia studying law. Then, at the age of twenty-one, he worked for the newly started "El Universal", a regional newspaper based in Cartagena.

In a story entitled "Love and Cartagena" by Anand Giriharadas, in the New York Times (29 April, 2010), snippets of an interview with Márquez revealed that he felt that it was during his stay in this city that he "completed his education as a writer.

Whilst "Love in the Time of Cholera" (1985) does not mention the name of the city that the story is set in, a number of students agree, that it is, most likely, based on the city of Cartagena.

This suggestion is drawn from a number of the names and places mentioned and the inclusion of the nearby Magdalena River.

Answer: Morocco

A short time after completing his novel "The Road to Wigan", in 1936, Orwell set off to "fight fascism" in the Spanish Civil War. "The Road to Wigan" would be published the following year, the same time that Orwell was in the Spanish trenches, where he was shot in the throat. By some miracle the bullet had just missed a major artery and, despite coming through the ordeal, he was declared unfit to fight on.

He returned to England but his health deteriorated. With winter approaching, fellow writer L.H. Myers became concerned for Orwell and secretly funded a trip for him to Morocco.

The period of rest did wonders for Orwell who, in a letter to British novelist Jack Common, wrote, "the long rest has done me good and I am getting on with a new novel ("Coming Up For Air" - 1939), whereas a year ago after that awful nightmare in Spain, I had seriously thought I would never be able to write a novel again."

Answer: The American Southwest

Born in Russia, Nabokov's family made their way to Berlin after the October Revolution (1917) forced them to flee from the Crimea. Vladimir married a Russian Jewish woman here in 1925 but, with the rising level of anti-Semitism during the 1930s, they fled to France.

However, with German troops advancing on Paris in 1940 they would, once again, take flight (well, boat actually), this time to settle in the United States. Whilst we know Nabokov for his remarkable talents as a writer, he was also a composer of chess problems and an expert lepidopterist. Yes, he chased butterflies and he pursued his passion throughout the American Southwest.

This, in turn, provided the backdrop for his sensational novel "Lolita" (1955) and that famous "road trip" conducted by Humbert Humbert, as he moved from motel to motel, living out his obsession with the twelve-year-old Dolores, and keeping her from going to the police.

Answer: Tangier/The Sahara Desert

"The Sheltering Sky" (1949) tells the story of a New York couple, Port and Kit Moresby, who travel to the North African desert in an attempt to reconcile their differences. They fail to do so because they cannot reconcile themselves with the harsh environment they find themselves in.

This landmark in modern literature was written by Bowles not long after moving to Tangier in 1947, a city that he explored and expressed his love for in his essay "The Worlds of Tangier" (1958). He was also drawn to the Sahara, which features in the novel, and its naked beauty and stillness; "An incredible, absolute silence prevails" ("Baptism of Solitude" - 1957).