World Literature | 10 Question Literature Multiple Choice Quiz

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. Published in 1948, "Cry, the Beloved Country" by Alan Paton is set in which country?

Answer: South Africa

This great but tragic novel combines an analysis of the injustices of the apartheid system in South Africa with the experience of a minister seeking his son only to find that he has become involved in crime and is eventually executed for murder. The victim of the murder was a social reformer whose father becomes a friend of the minister and the two work together to try to improve the conditions of the people in the minister's village. Reading the book is an emotional roller coaster but is very rewarding.

It became the basis for a film and for a musical with music by Kurt Weill.

2. The folk tales and mythology of which country provide the material for the nineteenth century epic poem the "Kalevala", which was one of the influences on Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings"?

Answer: Finland

The "Kalevala" uses folk tales, legends and mythology as the basis for a tale of the creation of the world. The name "Kalevala" is itself a name representing Finland and means "land of heroes".

3. In which novel could you meet the fictional characters Natasha Rostova and Pierre Bezhukov, as well as the real person Field Marshal Kutuzov?

Answer: War and Peace

Tolstoy's working title for this massive novel was "The Year 1805", the year in which the action begins. It is a study of several noble families set against the background of the Napoleonic wars, climaxing with his invasion of Russia in 1812. The book contains dramatic descriptions of the battles of Austerlitz and Borodino.

The other options are works by Dostoevsky, Chekhov and Dickens.

4. Which Colombian author, who wrote "Love in the Time of Cholera" and "One Hundred Years of Solitude", received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982?

Answer: Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The most celebrated writer from Colombia, Gabriel Garcia Marquez was a journalist and screen writer who wrote non-fiction works as well as highly regarded novels. The citation for his Nobel Prize said that in his novels and short stories "the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent's life and conflicts".

The other three writers were also born in Colombia.

5. One of the four "Queens of Crime" alongside Margery Allingham, Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, which New Zealand writer created the detective Roderick Alleyn?

Answer: Ngaio Marsh

Born in Christchurch, New Zealand, her birth name was Edith Ngaio Marsh but she published under her middle name, which is a Maori word for the names of both an insect and a flowering tree. She wrote over thirty novels featuring the detective Roderick Alleyn over a period of almost fifty years.

In recognition of her contribution to literature she was honoured first with an OBE and later became a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

6. In which language were the Indian epic poems the "Mahabharata" and the "Ramayana" written?

Answer: Sanskrit

All four of these languages are officially recognised in India, but the great epics, both of which date back at least 2000 years, were written originally in the classical language of southern Asia.

These two massive epic poems combine historical narrative, philosophy and allegory, forming the basis of much of Hindu culture.

7. Published in 1960 and filmed two years later, which novel by a female author in the USA features the lawyer Atticus Finch, voted in 2003 as the greatest hero in all American cinema by the American Film Institute?

Answer: To Kill a Mockingbird

Narrated by Atticus' daughter Jean Louise (nicknamed "Scout") this classic of American literature explores in a sensitive manner controversial issues including rape and racial discrimination. When Atticus is appointed to defend an African American accused of raping a white woman, Scout and her brother Jem are vilified by their peers.

The novel won the Pulitzer prize in 1961 and Gregory Peck won an Oscar for his portrayal of Atticus Finch in the film directed by Alan J. Pakula.

8. "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and "The Water Margin" are fourteenth century classic novels in the literature of which country?

Answer: China

These are two of the four books which taken together are regarded as the classics of Chinese literature, the other two being "Journey to the West" and "Dream of the Red Chamber".

9. The French author Francoise Sagan published her first novel at the age of eighteen in 1954. Translated into English its title is "Hello Sadness". What is the original French title?

Answer: Bonjour Tristesse

"Bonjour", "Salut" and "Coucou" are all greetings used in France while "Tristesse" means sadness and "Souffrance" means suffering.

The novel, which is a tale of young love gone tragically wrong, was an immediate success. It was filmed in 1958 in English by the director Otto Preminger. Although she wrote over twenty novels, some of which also became the sources of films, none of the later ones enjoyed the success of Sagan's first novel.

10. In a play written in 1920 the Czech science fiction author Karel Capek adapted an eastern European term for forced labour to create a now common technological term applied to machines. What word did he create?

Answer: Robot

The play was called "Rossum's Universal Robots", with the name robot taken from a Slavic word "robota" which originated in the practice of serfdom. In the play a factory makes "roboti" from organic material which makes them closer to androids than to what we think of as robots.

As so often in science fiction, the roboti rise in rebellion against their human creators and slaughter most of the human race.

Source: Author Quizaddict1

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor looney_tunes before going online.
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World Literature | 10 Question Literature Multiple Choice Quiz

This quiz ranges over fictional literature from across the world, with at least one question relating to every continent. Grab your passport and let's go.

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