Authors: Anannya Deb, Sumant Srivathsan, Vibhendu Tewari

1. KGAF 2011Literature Quiz The Bombay Quiz Club

2. Preliminary Round KGAF 2011 Literature Quiz The Bombay Quiz Club

3. Teams of two – let us know if you need help finding a partner. 25 questions, 30 points (20 questions for 1 point, 5 questions for 2 points). Please answer legibly – if we can’t read it, it’s wrong. This is not a spelling test, but please try and get as close as possible. Last names of people are sufficient, unless otherwise specified. Questions marked with a * will be used to break ties (5 in number). For multi-part questions, only fully-correct answers count in the tiebreak. Please ensure that electronic devices do not get in the way of this quiz. Your hosts, benevolent dictators and undisputed final authorities: Anannya Deb Sumant Srivathsan VibhenduTewari The Rules

4. They’re serving khimapao at Olympia, dal gosht at Baghdadi, puribhaji at Kailash Parbat, aabgosht at Sarvi’s, kebabs with sprigs of mint at Gulshan-e-Iran, nali-nehari at Noor Mohamadi’s baidagotala at the Oriental, paya soup at Benazir, brunmaska at Military Café, upmaat Swagat, shira at Anand Vihar, and fried eggs and bacon at Wayside Inn. For, yes, it’s breakfast time at ____ ______ as elsewhere in and around Bombay - up and down the whole hungry longitude, in fact; the 73rd, if I’m not mistaken. Prelims 1 Fill in the blanks, and also name the poet.

5. Breakfast at Kala Ghoda, by ArunKolatkar Prelims 1 - Answer

6. Describe this flag of a short-lived nation in five words. Prelims 2

7. Half Of A Yellow Sun Prelims 2 - Answer

8. Which word answers to both these descriptions? A category of musical compositions that are inspired by and evocative of night time. Frédéric Chopin is the most famous exponent of this form, with 21 compositions to his name. A collection of short fiction published in 2009 by a Booker Prize-winning novelist, with five stories about music, musicians and the close of day. Prelims 3

9. Nocturnes Prelims 3 - Answer

10. The author of a celebrated (and weighty) 1993 novel says of a new project: “I think it’s just that I suddenly got the idea of not taking up the story in 1952 where I had left it, but rather to take it up in the present. In other words, not just a sequel, but to write what you could call a jump sequel.” The sequel will have Lata, the young heroine of the original novel, now 75, looking for a wife for her grandson, “whether he is thinking about it or not.” What is the name of this sequel? Prelims 4

11. A Suitable Girl, Vikram Seth’s proposed follow-up to A Suitable Boy. Prelims 4 - Answer

12. What phrase in literature, usually used in disparaging terms to critique climactic sequences of a certain nature, derives from the act of lowering an actor onto the stage with a crane, as shown below? Prelims 5

13. Deus ex machina or “God from a machine”. The actor being lowered onto the stage usually played a Greek god, who would stage the divine intervention necessary to resolve complicated plots in plays by Aristophanes and Euripides. Prelims 5 - Answer

14. Among the many tablets in Mesopotamia, there are some which detail out specific trade in wood, copper, tin, carnelian beads, shell, ivory, peacocks and monkeys from a region which archaeologists and historians today identify as the cities of the Indus and Saraswati Valley, possibly Dholavira or Lothal, which were major trading hubs. What was the name given to this region on the tablets? Prelims 6

15. Meluha, recently encountered in Amish Tripathi’sThe Immortals of Meluha. Prelims 6 - Answer

16. When the filmmaker expressed interested in turning this four-page short story into a feature film, the author (who had earlier collaborated with the filmmaker on a children’s film) expanded it into an 80-page novella, which then evolved into a 200-page script. Name the film, in which the writer will make his maiden film appearance in a short cameo. Prelims 7

17. 7 KhoonMaaf, Vishal Bharadwaj’s film based on Ruskin Bond’s short story Susanna’s Seven Husbands. Prelims 7 - Answer

18. His first novel, Fatherland (1992), dealt with the alternative scenario of Nazi Germany winning WWII and establishing the Greater German Reich in Europe. His novel, The Ghost, about an ex-Prime Minister writing his memoirs with a ghostwriter reflected his own views of British PM Tony Blair ghostwriting George W. Bush’s case for the war on terror. He has a trilogy on a famous Roman; two of these books are already published, and a third due out in 2011. Name this former BBC television reporter turned novelist. Prelims 8

19. Robert Harris Prelims 8 - Answer

20. As a child, his uncle gave him the nickname “Nawab”, and he used it as a pseudonym to publish an Urdu novel titled Bazaar-e-Husn. While the novel is based in Lucknow, a Tamil film, SevaSadan, was made in 1938, placing the tale in a South Indian Brahmin setting, and with M. S. Subbalakshmi in the lead role. What is the more popular pseudonym used by this Indian man of letters? Prelims 9

21. Premchand Prelims 9 - Answer

22. Whose itinerary is shown in this map? Prelim 10

23. Jack Kerouac, the trip that was eventually documented as On The Road Prelims 10 - Answer

24. If Pyramus and Thisbe is to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, then what is to Hamlet? Prelims 11 *

25. The Murder of Gonzago, the play within the play. Prelims 11 – Answer *

26. On December 31, 1974, three people honoured with the KBE (“To be Ordinary Knights Commanders of the Civil Division of the said Most Excellent Order”) were listed in the London Gazette as follows: Charles Spencer Chaplin, Film Actor and Producer Edwin Rodney Smith, President, Royal College of Surgeons of England ______ _________ _________, Author The author, then 93 years old, heeded his doctor’s advice and did not travel to England to receive his knighthood. His wife received his honours from the local British Consul. Who was this author? Prelims 12

27. Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse Prelims 12 - Answer

28. The protagonist of this critically acclaimed debut novel from 2007 earns his nickname (also referenced in the title) when his Halloween costume prompts a classmate to note his physical similarity to “that fat homo _____ _____.” The nickname is a Hispanic (and Oriental-sounding) mispronunciation of the aforementioned “homo”. The title of the novel itself is a nod to an Ernest Hemingway short story set in a big game safari in Africa. What is the nickname? Prelims 13 *

29. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz. The “homo” in question is Oscar Wilde. Prelims 13 - Answer *

30. Which fictional character, with a total appearance score of 33 novels and 51 short stories, connects these men? Prelims 14 First Latest

31. HerculePoirot, first played by Charles Laughton in a West End theatre production in the 1920s, and most recently by David Suchet in the ongoing television series which will conclude in 2011 when every Poirot story will have been filmed. Prelims 14 - Answer

32. Using the picture as a guide, fill in the blank in the author’s description: “A ______! I should describe it as a journey, long or short, without an end; the only thing regulating it being the necessity of getting back within a given time to the point from which it started.” Prelims 15

33. Bummel Prelims 15 - Answer

34. It is a collection of over 2,000 pieces of verse on two basic themes: agam (inner feelings) and puram (outer exploits). In the agam poetry, emotions are symbolically represented in the form of specific landscapes, called thinai. The landscape categories are Kurinji (mountains), Mullai (forests), Marutham (farms), Neithal (seashores) and Paalai (deserts). What is the name given to this body of work? Prelims 16

35. Tamil Sangam literature/poetry Prelims 16 - Answer

36. In a speech at the opening of the Edinburgh Philosophical Institute on November 4, 1846, which champion of the British Empire raised this toast to British Literature: “. . . to that literature which has taught France the principles of liberty and furnished Germany with models of art; to that literature which forms a tie closer than the tie of consanguinity between us and the commonwealths of the valley of the Mississippi; to that literature before the light of which impious and cruel superstitions are fast taking flight on the banks of the Ganges . . . To the Literature of Britain, then! And, wherever British literature spreads, may it be attended by British virtue and by British freedom!” Prelims 17

37. Thomas Babbington Macaulay Prelims 17 - Answer

38. Fill in the missing playwright’s name in this quote from Milan Kundera’sThe Book of Laughter and Forgetting: “Rhinoceros is a play by ______ _______ in which the characters possessed by a desire to be similar to one another, one by one turn into rhinoceroses.” The play, set in provincial France, documents the pre-WWII growth of Fascism and Communism in Europe, and explores themes of conformity, culture and morality. Prelims 18 *

39. Eugene Ionesco Prelims 18 – Answer *

40. Connect, and identify the missing book. Prelims 19 ?

41. The shared Booker Prizes (1974 and 1992); The English Patientby Michael Ondaatje Prelims 19 - Answer

42. Born in 1930 in the town of Ogidi, his evangelical Christian parents named him Albert. He later dropped this name, joking that he and Queen Victoria had one thing in common, “we both lost our Albert.” In 2007, almost fifty years after his first novel in 1958 and at the age of 77, he won the inaugural Man Booker International Prize, with jury chairperson Elain Showalter saying in her citation “in redrawing the contours of African history, he has redrawn the contours of the novel joyce created for the 20th Century.” Who? Prelims 20

43. Chinua Achebe Prelims 20 - Answer

44. The epitaph on this author’s memorial stone is a palindromic phrase which also served as the title of his twenty-second novel, based on the last days of John Keats. The phrase has several connotations: it means “father, father” in Aramaic, Arabic, Hebrew and other Semitic languages, reflective of the author’s multilingual proficiency. It is also his initials forwards and backwards, and part of the rhyme scheme of the Petrarchan sonnet. Name both the novelist and his epitaph/novel. Prelims 21

45. Anthony Burgess, and ABBA, ABBA Prelims 21 - Answers

46. Arnaut Daniel de Riberac, a 12th Century Occitan troubadour and poet who is believed to have invented the sestina, is considered by many to be the foremost proponent of romance of his time. Petrarch called him the “Grand Master of Love”. Not surprisingly, in The Divine Comedy, Dante encounters him in Purgatory doing penance for lust. The term Dante used to refer to Daniel became much more well known when it was used by a 20th Century poet in a dedication. What is this sobriquet, and who are the two 20th Century poets? Prelims 22

47. Il migliofabbro (the better craftsman); T. S. Eliot’s dedication of The Waste Land to Ezra Pound. Prelims 22 - Answers

48. This poem about a girl called Zemfira, written in 1824, was one of the four Southern Poems written when the poet was in exile in the south of his country. According to one expert, this poem has inspired at least 18 operas, one of which is based on an 1845 novella, which is in turn based on the poem. Name both the poem and the poet. Prelims 23 *

49. The Gypsies, by Alexander Pushkin, the source of any opera remotely associated with the name “Carmen” Prelims 23 – Answers *

50. These are the opening lines of which “experimental” novel, written sometime between 1965 and 1966? Also name the writer. Guns, The Falcon’s Mouthbook and Gashcat Unpunished Aretha/crystal jukebox queen of hymn and him diffused in drunk transfusion wound would heed sweet soundwave crippled & cry salute to oh great particular el dorado reel & ye battered personal god but she cannot she the leader of whom when ye follow, she cannot she has no back she cannot… beneath black flowery railroad fans & fig leaf shades & dogs of all nitejoes, grow like arhes & cures the harmonica battalions of bitter cowards, bones & bygones while what steadier louder the moans & arms… Prelims 24 *

51. Tarantula, by Bob Dylan Prelims 24 - Answers *

52. The circumstances of which occasion does this poem, read here by Pankaj Kapur, address? Also name the poet. Prelims 25

53. The formation of Pakistan/Partition; Subah-e-Azaadi (1947) by Faiz Ahmed Faiz Prelims 25 - Answers