What Do These Works Have in Common? Quiz

Answer: Man Booker prize winners

"The God of Small Things" by Indian author Arundhati Roy won the Man Booker prize for fiction in 1997; "True History of the Kelly Gang" was Australian Peter Carey's winning work in 2001 and "Life of Pi" was the winner in 2002 (Canadian Yann Martel was the author).

Answer: Authors who committed suicide

"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" (subtitled "A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream") was written by Hunter S Thompson, an American author and journalist who ended his own life in 2005 at the age of 67. "Mrs Dalloway" was written by Virgina Woolf, a British author and feminist who drowned herself at 49 by walking into a river with a pocket of stones. Ernest Hemingway, who wrote "The Old Man and the Sea", commited suicide at age 62, following a sad family tradition of his father and grandfather.

Answer: Elizabethan Literature

"The Spanish Tragedy" was a revenge play written by Thomas Kyd around 1582-1592; "Romeo and Juliet" was penned by Shakespeare around 1591-1595, and "Doctor Faustus" some time in the late 16th Century by Christopher Marlowe. Elizabethan Literature was named after the reigning monarch, Elizabeth I of England, who ruled from 1558-1603.

It saw a large volume of dramatic works produced, including many plays by its most famous exponent, Shakespeare.

Answer: Written in first person

"The Hunger Games" is narrated by 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen, "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Jean Louise "Scout" Finch, and "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" by 15-year-old boy Christopher, who has Asperger's Syndrome.

Answer: Death of the main character

"The Crucible" is a play written in 1953 by Arthur Miller, originally titled "The Chronicles of Sarah Good". It focuses on the events of the Salem witch trials and the execution of accused witches (including the main character, John Proctor). "The Scarlet Letter" is a fictional work by Nathaniel Hawthorne, telling the story of a woman who is shunned by her community in the mid 17th Century for acts of adultery.

The book ends with her death. "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" tells the story of a young boy whose father is a high-ranking German officer.

His death at the end is a large plot twist as he is accidentally sent to the gas chamber.

Answer: Main characters are animals

Rudyard Kipling's "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" was originally published as part of "The Jungle Book" and has a central character who is a mongoose. Anna Sewell's "Black Beauty" is told from the perspective of the horse himself. "Watership Down", by Richard Adams, centres on a group of rabbits.

Answer: The end of the world

"The Last Man", first published in 1826, is one of the first of a long line of works of apocalyptic fiction. It tells the story of a plague that wipes out most of the world's population. Stephen King's "The Stand" has a very similar theme, when a biological weapon is accidentally released and spreads rapidly, killing all but the handful of people who have a genetic immunity. "On the Beach" has a similar theme, with a nuclear World War III wiping out all Northern Hemisphere life.

Answer: Fantasy worlds created by the author

In the play "Peter Pan", the characters are taken to Neverland, a world where people never grow old. In "Lost Horizon", Shangri-La is also a place where immortality can be found, but also a paradise. "The Hobbit" is set in Middle Earth, a fantasy world of hobbits, trolls, elves, orcs and many other fantastical creatures.

Answer: True

"Silent Spring" was written by Rachel Carson in 1962 and is credited as having a large impact on the US (if not international) environmental movement. "The Diary of a Young Girl" was taken directly from holocaust victim Ann Frank's diary during the early 1940s. Freud's "The Interpretation of Dreams" outlines the psychoanalyst's theories on the unconscious and the meanings behind dreams.

Answer: Authors who used pseudonyms

"The Running Man" was authored by Richard Bachmann (better known as Stephen King). "Absent in the Spring" was one of several mystery novels by Mary Westamacott (who most of us would know better as Agatha Christie). "Sketches by Boz" was authored by a man named Boz, better known as Charles Dickens.