Literature – MCQ – GK Questions

R.K. Narayan won the Sahitya Akademi Award for 'The Guide', which was later adapted into a successful film.

Donna Tartt's 'The Goldfinch' follows a boy who survives a terrorist attack at an art museum and takes a famous painting.

An allegory uses symbolic figures and actions to convey deeper truths. Examples include George Orwell's 'Animal Farm' and John Bunyan's 'The Pilgrim's Progress'.

Sancho Panza is the pragmatic and humorous squire to the delusional knight-errant Don Quixote in Miguel de Cervantes' novel.

The 'Odyssey' follows Odysseus, King of Ithaca, and his ten-year journey home after the fall of Troy.

Kambar composed the 'Kamba Ramayanam' (Ramavataram) in the 12th century. It is a masterpiece of Tamil literature.

Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay wrote 'Devdas' in 1917. It tells the tragic love story of Devdas and Paro.

Agyeya published 'Shekhar: Ek Jivani' in 1941. It is considered the first Hindi novel to delve deeply into the psychoanalytic aspects of its protagonist.

Anita Desai published 'Clear Light of Day' in 1980. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and is celebrated for its psychological depth.

Nigerian playwright and poet Wole Soyinka was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986.

Chinua Achebe published 'Things Fall Apart' in 1958. It is widely considered the archetypal modern African novel in English.

Girish Karnad wrote 'Tughlaq' in Kannada in 1964 and later translated it to English. It explores the complex character of the Delhi Sultan Muhammad bin Tughlaq.

Edward FitzGerald published his loose translation of the quatrains of Omar Khayyam in 1859. It became one of the most popular poetry collections of the Victorian era.

The Sushruta Samhita is one of the foundational texts of Ayurveda, specifically focusing on surgery (Shalya Tantra). Sushruta is often called the 'Father of Surgery'.

Herman Melville published 'Moby-Dick' in 1851. Although initially a commercial failure, it is now recognized as a Great American Novel.

Salman Rushdie was awarded a knighthood in 2007 and later the Companion of Honour in 2022 by the British Crown for his services to literature.

Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya wrote 'Mrityunjay' and won the Jnanpith Award in 1979. It deals with the struggles of a young man in Assam.

Ray Bradbury wrote 'Fahrenheit 451' in 1953. The title refers to the temperature at which book paper supposedly catches fire and burns.

A MacGuffin is a term popularized by Alfred Hitchcock. It is an object, goal, or motivator that the characters care about, but the audience doesn't need to know the specifics of.

Historian Ramachandra Guha published 'India After Gandhi' in 2007. It provides a comprehensive history of India from its independence in 1947 to the modern era.