Authors & Poets

27 questions · Answers revealed below each question · Print this set

1.Which author wrote the Cairo Trilogy?
- A. Naguib Mahfouz
- B. Arundhati Roy
- C. Oscar Wilde
- D. Selma Lagerlöf
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Naguib Mahfouz
Did you know? Naguib Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize in 1988 as the first Arabic-language laureate.
2.Which playwright is regarded as the founder of Portuguese theatre?
- A. Sophocles
- B. Gil Vicente
- C. William Shakespeare
- D. Henrik Ibsen
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Gil Vicente
Did you know? Gil Vicente staged his plays at the Portuguese royal court in the 1500s.
3.Which poet wrote Requiem under Soviet censorship?
- A. Castro Alves
- B. Anna Akhmatova
- C. John Keats
- D. Carlos Drummond de Andrade
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Anna Akhmatova
Did you know? Anna Akhmatova's Requiem was memorized by friends for decades because writing it down was dangerous.
4.Which writer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978?
- A. Isaac Bashevis Singer
- B. Knut Hamsun
- C. Sigrid Undset
- D. Halldór Laxness
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Isaac Bashevis Singer
Did you know? Singer wrote in Yiddish about Polish Jewish life.
5.Which author wrote My Name Is Red?
- A. Alexandre Dumas
- B. Dante Alighieri
- C. Orhan Pamuk
- D. Victor Hugo
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Orhan Pamuk
Did you know? Orhan Pamuk won the Nobel Prize in 2006.
6.Which playwright wrote Oedipus Rex and Antigone?
- A. Aristophanes
- B. Arthur Miller
- C. Anton Chekhov
- D. Sophocles
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Sophocles
Did you know? Sophocles won more first prizes at the Athenian drama festivals than any rival.
7.Which poet was a leading voice of the Harlem Renaissance?
- A. William Butler Yeats
- B. Percy Bysshe Shelley
- C. Langston Hughes
- D. Charles Baudelaire
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Langston Hughes
Did you know? Langston Hughes began writing poetry as a student in Cleveland.
8.Which writer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1961?
- A. Wisława Szymborska
- B. Saul Bellow
- C. Ivo Andrić
- D. Dario Fo
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Ivo Andrić
Did you know? Andrić's The Bridge on the Drina spans centuries of Bosnian history.
9.Which author wrote Père Goriot within The Human Comedy cycle?
- A. Isabel Allende
- B. Honoré de Balzac
- C. Emily Brontë
- D. Rabindranath Tagore
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Honoré de Balzac
Did you know? Honoré de Balzac planned about ninety novels for The Human Comedy.
10.Which playwright wrote Medea and The Bacchae?
- A. Euripides
- B. Nelson Rodrigues
- C. Aristophanes
- D. Bertolt Brecht
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Euripides
Did you know? Euripides wrote about ninety plays, of which about eighteen survive complete.
11.Which poet wrote "Ozymandias"?
- A. Gonçalves Dias
- B. Anna Akhmatova
- C. Percy Bysshe Shelley
- D. Lord Byron
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Percy Bysshe Shelley
Did you know? Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned in a sailing accident off Italy in 1822.
12.Which writer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1955?
- A. Heinrich Böll
- B. Nadine Gordimer
- C. Gabriela Mistral
- D. Halldór Laxness
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Halldór Laxness
Did you know? Laxness is Iceland's only Nobel laureate in Literature.
13.Which author wrote A Season in Hell as a teenager and quit poetry by twenty?
- A. Rabindranath Tagore
- B. Margaret Atwood
- C. Arthur Rimbaud
- D. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Arthur Rimbaud
Did you know? Arthur Rimbaud gave up literature for travel and trade in Africa and Asia.
14.Which playwright wrote Vestido de Noiva?
- A. Sophocles
- B. Tennessee Williams
- C. Nelson Rodrigues
- D. Federico García Lorca
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Nelson Rodrigues
Did you know? Nelson Rodrigues is regarded as a founder of modern Brazilian drama.
15.Which writer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1905?
- A. Sigrid Undset
- B. Henryk Sienkiewicz
- C. Gabriela Mistral
- D. Nadine Gordimer
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Henryk Sienkiewicz
Did you know? Sienkiewicz won for Quo Vadis and his epic historical fiction.
16.Which author wrote Fathers and Sons?
- A. Franz Kafka
- B. Ivan Turgenev
- C. Kurt Vonnegut
- D. Virginia Woolf
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Ivan Turgenev
Did you know? Ivan Turgenev popularized the Russian novel in Western Europe.
17.Which poet wrote Poesias Infantis, used for decades to teach Portuguese spelling?
- A. Emily Dickinson
- B. Walt Whitman
- C. Robert Frost
- D. Olavo Bilac
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Olavo Bilac
Did you know? Olavo Bilac was one of the founders of the Brazilian Academy of Letters.
18.Which writer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1921?
- A. Sinclair Lewis
- B. Halldór Laxness
- C. Ivo Andrić
- D. Anatole France
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Anatole France
Did you know? France's irony made him France's dominant man of letters of his era.
19.Which poet wrote Romanceiro da Inconfidência?
- A. William Butler Yeats
- B. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- C. Alexander Pushkin
- D. Cecília Meireles
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Cecília Meireles
Did you know? Cecília Meireles led a landmark radio program about children's education in Rio.
20.Which author wrote Sons and Lovers?
- A. Chinua Achebe
- B. Kurt Vonnegut
- C. D. H. Lawrence
- D. Émile Zola
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D. H. Lawrence
Did you know? D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover was banned for decades in several countries.
21.Which writer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1928?
- A. Samuel Beckett
- B. Sigrid Undset
- C. Sinclair Lewis
- D. Derek Walcott
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Sigrid Undset
Did you know? Undset won for her medieval Norway saga Kristin Lavransdatter.
22.Which writer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1997?
- A. Dario Fo
- B. Günter Grass
- C. Saul Bellow
- D. Henryk Sienkiewicz
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Dario Fo
Did you know? Fo's farces drew on medieval Italian street theatre.
23.Which writer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1994?
- A. Mario Vargas Llosa
- B. Alice Munro
- C. Isaac Bashevis Singer
- D. Kenzaburo Ōe
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Kenzaburo Ōe
Did you know? Ōe was Japan's second literature laureate, after Kawabata.
24.Which writer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976?
- A. Yasunari Kawabata
- B. Gabriela Mistral
- C. Sinclair Lewis
- D. Saul Bellow
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Saul Bellow
Did you know? Bellow also won the Pulitzer for Humboldt's Gift.
25.Which writer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920?
- A. Knut Hamsun
- B. Derek Walcott
- C. Pearl S. Buck
- D. Saul Bellow
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Knut Hamsun
Did you know? Hamsun won for Growth of the Soil.
26.Which writer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934?
- A. Sigrid Undset
- B. Wisława Szymborska
- C. Kenzaburo Ōe
- D. Luigi Pirandello
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Luigi Pirandello
Did you know? Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author reshaped modern theatre.
27.Which writer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1972?
- A. Heinrich Böll
- B. Halldór Laxness
- C. Eugene O'Neill
- D. Ivo Andrić
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Heinrich Böll
Did you know? Böll's fiction examined postwar German society.

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