1. If Salman Rushdie wrote Haroun and the Sea of Stories for his first son Zafar, name its sequel which he wrote for this second son Milan?
2. Billed as the publishing event of the year in 2014, The Monogram Murders by Sophie Hannah brought back to life which fictional character after his death in Curtain published in 1975?
3. Shyam Benegal’s film Utsav was a cinematic adaptation of which classic Sanskrit play?
4. Which writer in his ‘Word of Thanks’ at the beginning of his book says in verse, And, gentle reader, you as well/ The fountainhead of all remittance/ Buy me before good sense insists/ You’ll strain your purse and sprain your wrists?
5. In what way was the collection of verses titled The History of Sixteen Wonderful Old Women, which appeared in 1821, the first of its kind?
6. Which Indian filmmaker and writer created the detective character Pradosh C Mitter, better known as Feluda?
7. What was unusually Dickensian about Stephen King’s novel The Green Mile?
8. A few years ago, a tourist guide book called Top Secret was published in Russia. What was unusual about the descriptions of world famous places?
9. St John of God is the patron saint of which profession?
10. In what way was Morgan Robertson’s 1898 book Futility prophetic?
11. Why did Shakespeare bequeath his ‘second-best’ bed to his wife Anne Hathaway in his will?
12. Who is the only writer to have penned at least one book in every category of the Dewey Decimal System (of library cataloguing)?
13. What is ‘counterfactual’ writing?
14. Which book ironically still ranks as one of the most censored books by the Vatican in history, yet it’s translated more times and into more languages than any other book and has outsold every book in the history of publishing?
15. Andrew Motion’s 2012 book Silver: Return to Treasure Island picks up where Robert Louis Stevenson left off in 1883. Stevenson failed to revisit the situation himself, although he was alive to the possibility of sequels. Catriona (1893) is a continuation of which of his novels?
16. When this novelist died in 1999, one of the New York tabloids caught the near biblical-sounding line of succession: ‘The Father of the Godfather Dead at 78’. Which famous writer was it referring to?
17. Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Stephen King’s Carrie, Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, and Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary are notable examples of a style of writing that presents the story in an unusual way. Name the style.
18. British soldiers’ mangled pronounciation of the Arabic cry they heard at Muharram processions in India, Ya Hasan! Ya Husayn! (O Hassan! O Husain!), mourning two grandsons of the Prophet who died fighting for the faith, became the title of Yule & Burnell’s 1886 classic glossary of Anglo-Indian words. What is the title?
19. Which multi-volume publication is the oldest English-language encyclopaedia still being produced?
20. The plaque for this award was designed by Satyajit Ray. Prior to this, the plaque was occasionally made of marble, but this practice was discontinued because of the excessive weight. During the Indo-Pakistan war of 1965, the plaque was substituted with a national savings bonds. Name the award?
Answers
1. Luka and the Fire of Life
2. Hercule Poirot
3. Mricchakatika (The Little Clay Cart) by Sudraka
4. Vikram Seth’s book A Suitable Boy, which runs to a phenomenal 1368 pages.
5. It was the first collection of limericks.
6. Satyajit Ray
7. It was originally published as a serial thriller in six parts. Many of Charles Dickens’ works first appeared in this form in magazines.
8. They were all written by retired KGB spies! For instance, did you know that other than for seeing animals the Bronx Zoo in NY was a great place to exchange secret information?
9. Booksellers and printers.
10. It foretold the sinking of the Titanic.
11. Because that was their bed as the best bed in Elizabethan houses was meant for guests.
12. Isaac Asimov. He has written over 500 books.
13. It refers to ‘what if’ history. For example Robert Harris’ classic novel Fatherland, which is set in a united Europe after a Nazi victory in World War II.
14. The Bible.
15. Kidnapped (1886).
16. Mario Puzo, the author of the Godfather
17. Epistolary form of writing — where the story is presented in the form of letters, diaries or documents written by the character/s.
18. Hobson-Jobson
19. Encyclopaedia Britannica
20. Sahitya Akademi Award