Lit Quiz Prelims April 26th'2015

Rules of the game ……
30 questions. 1 point each. No negatives. Half point at
the discretion of the QM.
Star marked questions for any tie. Stars are pointed in
each question.
8 teams to qualify. Any confusion, the QM is always
right.
Thanks to Aryapriya Ganguly, Debasish Bhattacharya
and Siddhartha Dev for being the perfect guinea pigs.
BEST OF LUCK 

1. ‘Commentarii de Bello Gallico’ is a Latin
work which describes the various battles
and their intrigues, tactics etc. applied in
a certain campaign over the duration of
nine years. The book is divided into 8
sections. The last section (i.e., the 8th) was
written by Aulus Hirtius. Who was the
author of the first 7 sections?

*2. This widely read Indian work is the only
known work by its writer about whom we only
know his name and that he got a patronage
from a king by the name of Dhavalachandra.
This work has been translated into many
languages and even Emperor Akbar asked his
minister Abul Fazl to translate and re-publish it,
with proper explanations or morals at the end
of each story to make it easy for the people to
understand it.
Which Indian work?

Hitopadesha
(by Narayan Pandit)

3. How do a young man called
‘Valentine’ and his close friend
‘Proteus’ better known to us
collectively in reference to a famous
work of literature?

4. Which ‘famous’ book starts with
this line:
"To be born again," sang Gibreel
Farishta tumbling from the heavens,
"first you have to die.“?

The Satanic Verses
(Salman Rushdie)

5. Which famous fictional character
was created by his writer initially to
mock his landlord whose name was
Mr. Probhat Mukherjee, with whom
the writer never shared a good
relation? (the fictional character is
also a Bengali brahmin)

Tenida's real name is Bhojohori
Mukherji.

6. Which current Bengali movie is
based on a detective story called
‘Rwin’ by a very famous author?

7. What is the
connection
between these
movies?

Ruskin Bond adaptations. Junoon:
A Flight Of Pigeons. The Blue
Umbrella. Susanna’s Seven
Husbands (7 Khoon Maaf).

8. Which famous ballad (probably one
of the poet’s best known works)
written in the early 19th century, is
based on the poet’s friend Thomas
Wilkinson’s book ’Tours to the British
Mountains’?

The Solitary Reaper (William
Wordsworth).

9. This fictional character got his name, as
per belief, from one of author’s friends
‘Joseph Alexander ............’, who was a
medical student at the University of
Edinburgh. The protagonist of the series
has described him sometimes as the best
of the “professionals”. Who?

10. Which famous Bengali author who
shares his first name with another iconic
Bengali author, is known for his books like
Ranur Prothom Bhagh’, ‘Ranur Ditio Bhagh’
etc.?

*11. She was one of the greats of Victorian poetry,
who was also a big fan of Greek classics and married
to another great Victorian poet. She formed a great
friendship with Mary Russell Mitford who helped her
in many ways. Her entire life was marred by physical
ailments and she took much comfort in her spaniel
which was a gift from Mary Mitford.
This spaniel has been made immortal in literature by
the book called ‘Flush: A Biography’ (Flush was the
spaniel’s name) written by another iconic author and
published in 1933. This author of ‘Flush’ was also
portrayed by Nicole Kidman in a movie.
Who was the Victorian poet? Who was the author of
‘Flush’?

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
(married to Robert Browning),
Virginia Woolf

12. This is Raphanus Raphanistrum or Wild Radish.
What is the PORTUGUESE word for it? (hello, this is a
literature quiz)

Saramago
(José Saramago was accidently
named after that plant).

13. Which famous work of detective
fiction featuring a world famous
fictional sleuth, has an oddly named
travelling salesman by the name of
‘Alexander Bonaparte Cust’ whose life
events are described at the following
of other events in each chapter?

14. This famous trilogy of a Nobel
laureate has books which are named
after streets of a city where the
author lived. The three novels are
‘Bein el-Qasrein’, ‘Qasr el-Shoaq’ and
‘El-Sukkareyya’. Which city?

Cairo
(Hence it is called Cairo trilogy. By
Naquib Mahfouz)

15. ‘Lust for Life’ is a biographical
novel by Irving Stone about which
famous artist?
When it was adapted into a movie of
the same name, Kirk Douglas played
the protagonist.

*16. Which famous French author of the
19th century is credited with spreading
the popularity of the colour ‘Tuscany
Cypress’, which is often
quoted in his famous debut novel?

Gustave Flaubert,
(Madame Bovary)

*17. This post-modern novel was written by the
author in defiance to the Friedrich Nietzsche’s
eternal recurrence theory of human beings.
Nietzsche believed that the universe and its
events will keep on occurring again and again and
these occurrences put a heaviness on us which can
be of tremendous advantage or disadvantage
depending upon an individual’s perspective.
This novel propounds exactly the opposite theory
that each person has only one life to lead and its
occurrences happen only once and are never
repeated. Which novel?

The Unbearable Lightness of Being
(Milan Kundera)

18. What is the name of the place
which is the seat of Lord Emsworth,
an amiable and somewhat absent-
minded head of the
large Threepwood family?

19. This is a 2001 biographical film. What is
the name of the film? (hello, this is a lit quiz)

Based on the life of Dame Iris
Murdoch

*20. Which famous fictional character of a
children series was named by the author’s
nine year old daughter who requested a get-
well story from her mother after she fell ill?
(According to Stieg Larsson, he based the
character of the famous ‘Lisbeth Salander’
on what he imagined this girl might have
been like as an adult )

21. This famous fantasy novel was said to
be written by combining the English
fondness for word play with the American
appetite for outdoor adventure.
In one of its late 70’s movie adaptations,
one of the greatest male pop stars has
acted in it. Which novel?

*22. He was the grandson of an inventor and has
been described as the best satirical writer after
Jonathan Swift and as the most culturally and
politically influential artist of the twentieth
century.
The frequent theme in his works are
homosexuality, drugs and once he deliberately
severed the last joint of his left little finger to
impress a man with whom he was infatuated and
this event made its way into his early fiction as the
short story ‘The Finger’.
He has appeared in various media including on the
cover of ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’.
Who?

23. Which famous fictional character from
a cult 19th century work of English
literature is believed to have been based
on ‘Hans Christian Anderson’ in physical
attributes and on a man called ‘Thomas
Powell’ in character? (Thomas Powell was
a cunning forger who embezzled quite a
bit of fund from his employer).

24. Her uncle and cousin were Prime
Ministers of India. Her father was a
classical scholar who translated the epic
‘Rajatarangiṇi’ from Sanskrit to English.
She herself is a Sahitya Academy Award
winner and is known for her famous
works like ‘Rich Like Us’, ‘Prison and
Chocolate Cake’ etc. Who?

25. About the explanation for the title of
this dystopian novel, the writer wrote
that this title was a metaphor for an
organic entity, full of juice and sweetness
and agreeable odour, being turned into a
mechanism.
Andy Warhol adapted this novel into his
experimental movie called ‘Vinyl’. Later,
this novel was adapted into an iconic
movie. Which novel?

26. Which movie, adapted from a world
famous work of thriller fiction and
starring Sean Connery, has a caption of
‘The Hunt in on’?

27. Many people believe that the book
has been entirely written by his friend CB
Fry. The book covers topics such as
playing skills in public school, university,
county cricket etc. It was entitled for the
diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria in
1897. Who is the recognised author?

KS Ranjitsinhji
(The Jubilee Book of Cricket)

*28. Who is this lady who is presenting the book to the
Queen Isabeau of Bavaria? Simone de Beauvoir has
written about her ‘the first time we see a woman take up
her pen in defence of her sex’.

29. This is the plot synopsis of a book according to amazon.com:
Henry, a New Yorker left destitute by circumstances, is plucked from
vagrancy by a shadowy outfit whose primary business is arranging
for staged murders of anxiety-ridden clients unhinged by the
“events downtown” and seeking to experience and live through
their own carefully executed assassinations. When Henry joins this
nefarious crew, he becomes inextricably linked to its ringleader, the
mysterious herring connoisseur Mr. Kindt, whose identity can be
traced all the way back to the corpse depicted in a famous
Rembrandt painting.
Mirrored by a concurrently running story set in a hospital where
Henry and Mr. Kindt are patients attended to by a doctor, the
mysteries surrounding Mr. Kindt’s past, Henry’s fate, and murders
both staged and real begin to unravel in the most extraordinary
ways. WHICH FAMOUS THRILLER? WHAT IS THE NAME OF THE
REMBRANDT PAINTING?

The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp

*30. Which classic piece of literature
about the journey of a hero, was
actually intended to be burnt by the
author himself as he deemed it to be
imperfect during the time of his death,
but was saved by Emperor Augustus
who understood its true value?

Lit Quiz Prelims April 26th'2015

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Lit Quiz Prelims April 26th'2015