The Great White Part 2: Waxen Words Quiz

Answer: White Teeth

Zadie Smith's 'White Teeth' won the Whitbread Book Award for best first novel and the James Tait Memorial prize for fiction, amongst other accolades. The main protagonists are a white Englishman named Archie Jones and his Bangladeshi best friend Samad Iqbal, who first met while fighting for Britain in the Second World War. The novel focuses on issues of intertwining race, religion and culture by tracing the connections between the two families across the generations.

Question submitted by Fifiona81.

Answer: Racial intolerance and injustice under the apartheid system

'A Dry White Season' was André Brink's fifth novel, published in 1979. It tells the story of a white South African school teacher who believes in the fairness of the apartheid system until he sees first hand what it means when a black janitor from his school is arrested and "commits suicide" in detention. The novel won the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize. Brink, who died in 2015, was one of a generation of South African authors who used their writing to bring attention to the injustices of apartheid. He had previously published his second novel abroad in 1973 under the title 'Looking on Darkness' after it became the first book by an Afrikaaner banned in his own country.

Question submitted by pitegny.

Answer: The Black Company

Glen Cook (born 1944) started his epic fantasy series 'The Black Company' with the novel of the same name in 1984. Within a year he also published the instalments 'Shadows Linger' and 'The White Rose'. In this third book, a group of rebels called "The White Rose" hide in a plain that is somehow protected against the magic of the Lady, a powerful sorceress who leads the Empire. But a third party threatens both the White Rose and the Empire...

The colourful red herrings are other fantasy series. Stephen King wrote 'The Dark Tower', Jeff VanderMeer authored the series often referred to as the 'Ambergris' stories, and Philip Pullman created 'His Dark Materials'.

Question submitted by JanIQ.

Answer: Roderick Alleyn

Roderick Alleyn was Ngaio Marsh's gentleman detective. He was a minor member of the British aristocracy who eventually became a Chief Inspector at Scotland Yard. He often used his social connections and manners to work his way into cases, though he just as often stumbled upon them himself.

In 'Death in a White Tie', Alleyn and his partner Fox investigate the strangling of an old friend, Bunchy Gospell, who was murdered shortly after attending a coming out party for the daughters of London's elite. At the party, Alleyn had asked Bunchy to investigate a known blackmailer who would be attending.

Question submitted by Joepetz.

Answer: India

'The White Tiger' was Aravind Adiga's debut novel. Set in modern day India, it explores the uneasy relationship between different social classes created by the country's economic progress in the previous few decades. While globalization and the opening up of the economy has helped move many of the country's inhabitants out of poverty, it has also increased the chasm between the haves and the have-nots. Through the protagonist, Balram, the novel delves into this inequality and the consequent fault lines in society. Adiga's novel won the 40th Man Booker Prize in 2008, though the reception in his native country was less enthusiastic.

Question submitted by zorba_scank.

Answer: White Fang

American author, Jack London, wrote 'White Fang' from the point of view of an animal. The story follows a wolfdog's evolution from wildness to domestication and is based in Northern Canada. 'White Fang', which was published in 1906, is a companion novel to 'The Call of the Wild' and has been adapted for the screen several times.

Question submitted by Lones78.

Answer: The White Spider

In 'The White Spider', Harrer describes the forbidding, in parts sheer, north face of the Eiger, a mountain in the Bernese Alps which became a huge challenge to mountain climbers from all over the world. After many unsuccessful attempts and deaths, a way was found to traverse the area called "The White Spider", a treacherous basin 1500 ft below the summit, prone to avalanches. In the summer of 1938, Heinrich Harrer and Fritz Kasparek, who had started the climb as a team of two, joined part way up with a better equipped and more experienced team, Andreas Heckmair and Ludwig Vorg. Together they conquered one of the most difficult climbs in the world.

Question submitted by Windrush

Answer: Sensation Novels

Sensation fiction was a relatively short-lived genre whose heyday was the 1860s and 1870s. Novels in this genre combined elements from the earlier melodramatic fiction with crime and mystery themes. 'The Woman in White' is a convoluted tale of deception and revelation with many themes objectionable to Victorian society. Insanity, bigamy and illegitimate children are just three of them. Like most works of the genre, it was commercially very successful but panned by critics of the time, even though it is today regarded as a great work.

Question submitted by WesleyCrusher.

Answer: David Tutera

David Tutera is an American celebrity wedding planner. This book is written for a specific market - brides to be, grooms, mother of the bride, mother of the groom, in fact anyone connected in planning a wedding. 'The Big White Book of Weddings' could be very boring, however it is actually very entertaining. There is a wealth of detailed information about creating a perfect day, with asides about David's celebrity clients. I found the best information was doing a wedding on a budget. David shows that brides can be sophisticatedly chic and resourceful on a realistic budget.

Question submitted by em1958.

Answer: Elizabeth Woodville

Philippa Gregory's 'The White Queen' is about Elizabeth Woodville, the wife of King Edward IV of England. She gained the description of "white" because Edward was the first monarch of the House of York, whose emblem was a white rose. The book tells the story of the key events of the Wars of the Roses from the point of view of Elizabeth and other important women of the royal court. While the book is largely based around historical facts, it also contains a significant amount of artistic license - not least the fact that Gregory's Elizabeth Woodville apparently came from a long line of witches and wasn't afraid to use her supernatural powers to further her cause.

The incorrect options are all the titular characters of other novels in Gregory's 'Cousin's War' series - Margaret Beaufort (mother of King Henry VII) was 'The Red Queen', Anne Neville (wife of King Richard III) was 'The Kingmaker's Daughter' and Jacquetta of Luxembourg (Elizabeth Woodville's mother) was 'The Lady of the Rivers'.

Question submitted by Fifiona81.