Books and Authors Questions and Answers

Answer: B

Train to Pakistan was written by Khushwant Singh.

The novel, published in 1956, is set in the fictional border village of Mano Majra during the Partition of 1947. It shows how the communal violence of that summer reached a village where Sikhs and Muslims had lived together peacefully.

The other authors are known for different books: Amit Chaudhuri for A Strange and Sublime Address, Arundhati Roy for The God of Small Things, and Salman Rushdie for Midnight's Children.

Answer: B

Hemingway wrote The Old Man and the Sea.

Ernest Hemingway (printed 'Earnest') published The Old Man and the Sea in 1952. The short novel, about the ageing Cuban fisherman Santiago and his struggle with a giant marlin, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and was cited when Hemingway received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.

Nineteen Eighty-Four is by George Orwell and Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. Since one of the options is a Hemingway book, 'None of these' is wrong.

Answer: C

The answer is None of them.

None of the three authors wrote a book called 'Angry Bird'. The title is a trap aimed at Ruskin Bond, whose children's novella is Angry River, about a girl named Sita caught in a flood on a river island.

Dominique Lapierre is known for The City of Joy and, with Larry Collins, Freedom at Midnight. Mulk Raj Anand wrote Untouchable and Coolie. Neither wrote a book of that name either.

Answer: A

India Remembered was written by Pamela Mountbatten.

Lady Pamela Hicks (née Mountbatten), the younger daughter of Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India, published India Remembered: A Personal Account of the Mountbattens During the Transfer of Power in 2007. It draws on her diaries and photographs from 1947-48, when she lived in Delhi as a teenager during independence and partition.

J. K. Rowling wrote the Harry Potter series, William Dalrymple writes on Indian history in books such as The Last Mughal, and V. S. Naipaul's India books include An Area of Darkness.

Answer: C

The book by Tagore is Raktakarabi.

Raktakarabi (Red Oleanders), written in 1924, is Rabindranath Tagore's symbolic play about a tyrannical king and the mining town he rules.

Anandamath and Durgeshnandini are novels by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay; Anandamath contains 'Vande Mataram'. Chidambara is a Hindi poetry collection by Sumitranandan Pant, which won the Jnanpith Award.

Answer: A

The correct code is 3 4 2 1.

• A. Mahatma Gandhi wrote Hind Swaraj (1909): 3.
• B. Ram Manohar Lohia wrote The Wheel of History: 4.
• C. Dr. Rajendra Prasad wrote India Divided (1946): 2.
• D. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad wrote India Wins Freedom: 1.

Read in A B C D order this gives 3 4 2 1. The other codes give India Wins Freedom to Gandhi or Hind Swaraj to someone else, which rules them out.

Answer: B

The author is Veerappa Moily.

M. Veerappa Moily, the former Chief Minister of Karnataka and Union minister, is also a writer. The Flaming Tresses of Draupadi is his work centred on Draupadi of the Mahabharata. He had earlier won the Saraswati Samman for his Kannada epic on the Ramayana.

Smriti Irani and Mallikarjun Kharge did not write this book, and since Moily did, 'None of them' is wrong.

Answer: C

Pratham Pratishruti was written by Ashapurna Devi.

The Bengali novel, published in 1964, follows Satyabati, a girl married in childhood who struggles for dignity and education in nineteenth-century Bengal. It is the first part of a trilogy completed by Subarnalata and Bakul Katha, and it won Ashapurna Devi the Jnanpith Award in 1976.

Rabindranath Tagore, Sunil Gangopadhyay and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar were major Bengali writers, but this novel is not theirs.

Answer: D

Dristipat is by Binoy Mukhopadhyay.

Drishtipat, a series of sketches of Delhi's political life in the 1940s written as letters, was published under the pen name Jajabar, which belonged to Binoy Mukhopadhyay. It was one of the most popular Bengali books of its decade.

Bankim Chandra and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay were novelists of an earlier generation, and Bimal Mitra is known for Saheb Bibi Golam.

Answer: D

Game Changer is by Shahid Afridi.

Game Changer, published in 2019, is the autobiography of the former Pakistan cricket captain Shahid Afridi, written with Wajahat S. Khan. It drew attention for his comments on his age and on other players. Afridi played international cricket for Pakistan from 1996 to 2018 and was known for fast-scoring batting and leg-spin bowling.

Urjit Patel, a former RBI Governor, wrote Overdraft, S. Jaishankar wrote The India Way, and Malala Yousafzai's memoir is I Am Malala.