Books and Authors Questions and Answers

Answer: B

It is Deepak Chopra.

Ageless Body, Timeless Mind, published in 1993, argues that ageing is influenced by consciousness and expectation. Its sales were driven by a television appearance, and it made him among the best-known writers on alternative medicine.

Answer: D

Swami and Friends was written by R.K. Narayan, published in 1935.

It was his first novel and introduced the fictional town of Malgudi, in which he set almost all his later work. Graham Greene helped find a publisher for it.

Answer: D

It was instituted in 1968.

The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel was created by the Swedish central bank on its 300th anniversary and first awarded in 1969. It is not one of the five prizes in Nobel's will.

Answer: B

Mrichchhakatika (The Little Clay Cart) was written by Shudraka.

The Sanskrit play, in ten acts, is unusual in taking its plot from ordinary city life - a merchant, a courtesan and a political coup - rather than from myth or epic.

Answer: D

It is Ranjit Biswas.

The Indian Police Service officer and writer published Colours of the Rainbow, a collection of essays. He has also written fiction in English and Assamese.

Answer: D

It is Palkuriki Somanatha.

The thirteenth-century Telugu poet wrote Panditaradhya Charitamu on the Virashaiva teacher Mallikarjuna Panditaradhya, and also the Basava Puranamu. He wrote in the desi metres of ordinary speech rather than classical Sanskritised Telugu.

Answer: B

Laghujatakam was not written by Kalidasa - it is an astrological work by Varahamihira.

Kumarasambhavam, Meghadutam and Raghuvamsam are all Kalidasa's, the greatest of the Sanskrit poets, who is usually placed in the Gupta period.

Answer: C

Aristotle said man is a political animal.

The phrase is from the Politics: zoon politikon, an animal of the polis. He meant that human beings realise their nature only in the life of a city-state, and that one who could live outside it would be either a beast or a god.

Answer: D

The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1987) was written by Paul Kennedy.

The book argues that great powers decline when military commitments outrun the economic base that supports them - "imperial overstretch".

Answer: A

Anandamath (1882) was written by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay.

Set against the Sannyasi rebellion in Bengal, the novel contains the song Vande Mataram, later adopted as India's national song. Bankim Chandra is regarded as the first major novelist in Bengali.