Famous Novels

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

1.Which novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2007?
- A. The Road
- B. Candide
- C. Buddenbrooks
- D. Heart of Darkness
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The Road
Did you know? McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel follows a father and son.
2.Which Brazilian novel recalls boarding-school life under Mr. Aristarcho?
- A. Quarto de Despejo
- B. A Moreninha
- C. Vidas Secas
- D. O Ateneu
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O Ateneu
Did you know? Raul Pompeia's O Ateneu opens with "My air, my youthful air!"
3.Which novel follows the Trueba family through Chilean upheavals?
- A. Fathers and Sons
- B. The Optimist's Daughter
- C. The House of the Spirits
- D. The Stone Diaries
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The House of the Spirits
Did you know? Isabel Allende's debut novel is The House of the Spirits (1982).
4.Which Brazilian novel is set on a holiday outing to Paquetá Island?
- A. A Moreninha
- B. Menino de Engenho
- C. Vidas Secas
- D. O Ateneu
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A Moreninha
Did you know? Joaquim Manuel de Macedo's A Moreninha (1844) is an early Brazilian urban novel.
5.Which novel follows the Devil's visit to Soviet Moscow?
- A. The Master and Margarita
- B. Great Expectations
- C. The Good Earth
- D. Middlesex
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The Master and Margarita
Did you know? Bulgakov burned an early draft of The Master and Margarita himself.
6.Which Brazilian novel recalls a childhood on a Pernambuco sugar mill?
- A. Menino de Engenho
- B. A Moreninha
- C. Vidas Secas
- D. O Ateneu
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Menino de Engenho
Did you know? Menino de Engenho (1932) opens José Lins do Rego's cane cycle.
7.Which novel closes with "It is a far, far better thing that I do..."?
- A. A Tale of Two Cities
- B. The Age of Innocence
- C. The Line of Beauty
- D. Dangerous Liaisons
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A Tale of Two Cities
Did you know? Carton's final thought as he faces the guillotine closes the novel.
8.Which Brazilian novel pairs the indigenous hero Peri with the gentle Ceci?
- A. Gabriela, Cravo e Canela
- B. O Guarani
- C. Vidas Secas
- D. O Cortiço
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O Guarani
Did you know? O Guarani became a national romance and an opera by Carlos Gomes.
9.Which novel opens with a father's advice about criticizing people?
- A. The Luminaries
- B. We
- C. The Great Gatsby
- D. Sacred Hunger
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The Great Gatsby
Did you know? Fitzgerald frames Gatsby as Nick's recollection of his father's advice.
10.Which Brazilian novel collects diary entries written in a favela shack?
- A. Quarto de Despejo
- B. Iracema
- C. Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos
- D. Mar Morto
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Quarto de Despejo
Did you know? Carolina Maria de Jesus titled her book after her "sweepings room".
11.Which novel opens with Clarissa deciding to buy the flowers herself?
- A. Mrs Dalloway
- B. The Optimist's Daughter
- C. Ulysses
- D. We
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Mrs Dalloway
Did you know? Woolf's entire novel unfolds in a single June day in London.
12.Which Brazilian novel is narrated by jagunço Riobaldo?
- A. O Quinze
- B. Grande Sertão: Veredas
- C. Menino de Engenho
- D. Macunaíma
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Grande Sertão: Veredas
Did you know? Guimarães Rosa's novel reinvented Brazilian Portuguese prose.
13.Which novel depicts a society of glass buildings ruled by the Benefactor?
- A. The Red and the Black
- B. The Hobbit
- C. Beloved
- D. We
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We
Did you know? Yevgeny Zamyatin's We (1921) inspired dystopias from Huxley and Orwell.
14.Which Brazilian novel chronicles a tenement in Rio through its owner João Romão?
- A. Iracema
- B. Quarto de Despejo
- C. Vidas Secas
- D. O Cortiço
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O Cortiço
Did you know? O Cortiço (1890) applies Naturalism to urban Brazil.
15.Which novel opens with opera-goers at the Academy of Music?
- A. Beloved
- B. The Age of Innocence
- C. Siddhartha
- D. The Brothers Karamazov
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The Age of Innocence
Did you know? Wharton's opening situates New York society at an 1870s opera premiere.
16.Which Brazilian novel follows a lazy hero through Brazilian folklore?
- A. Gabriela, Cravo e Canela
- B. Macunaíma
- C. Mar Morto
- D. Vidas Secas
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Macunaíma
Did you know? Macunaíma's refrain: "Ai! que preguiça!"
17.Which novel won the Booker Prize in 1982?
- A. Rabbit Is Rich
- B. The Jungle Book
- C. The Death of Ivan Ilyich
- D. Schindler's Ark
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Schindler's Ark
Did you know? Keneally's Booker winner became the film Schindler's List.
18.Which Brazilian novel pairs the "virgin of honey lips" with a Portuguese colonist?
- A. Iracema
- B. O Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma
- C. Vidas Secas
- D. Grande Sertão: Veredas
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Iracema
Did you know? Iracema (1865) is Alencar's allegory of Brazil's origins.
19.Which novel follows Juan Preciado into the town of Comala?
- A. Pedro Páramo
- B. The Hours
- C. For Whom the Bell Tolls
- D. Sister Carrie
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Pedro Páramo
Did you know? Juan Rulfo's Pedro Páramo (1955) pioneered magical realism in Spanish.
20.Which novel follows friar William of Baskerville solving deaths in an abbey?
- A. The Luminaries
- B. The Name of the Rose
- C. The Hours
- D. Wolf Hall
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The Name of the Rose
Did you know? Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose (1980) became an international bestseller.
21.Which play centers on a poet with a famously large nose?
- A. Peter Pan
- B. The Sound and the Fury
- C. Cyrano de Bergerac
- D. Dune
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Cyrano de Bergerac
Did you know? Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac (1897) is a verse drama.
22.Which novel follows Yuri Zhivago through war and revolution?
- A. Sister Carrie
- B. The House of the Spirits
- C. The Phantom of the Opera
- D. Doctor Zhivago
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Doctor Zhivago
Did you know? Doctor Zhivago was first published in Italy in 1957 after Soviet refusal.
23.Which novel opens with the narrator giving his birth year of 1632?
- A. Robinson Crusoe
- B. Siddhartha
- C. Slaughterhouse-Five
- D. Catch-22
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Robinson Crusoe
Did you know? Defoe's narrator opens with his family's Bremen origins.
24.Which novel follows Prince Fabrizio through Sicily's unification?
- A. Robinson Crusoe
- B. The Charterhouse of Parma
- C. Oscar and Lucinda
- D. The Leopard
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The Leopard
Did you know? Lampedusa's The Leopard (1958) is regarded as Italy's greatest modern novel.
25.Which novel chronicles four generations of a merchant family?
- A. Beloved
- B. Wuthering Heights
- C. Rabbit Is Rich
- D. Buddenbrooks
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Buddenbrooks
Did you know? Thomas Mann's first novel Buddenbrooks won him the Nobel Prize citation.
26.Which novel opens as a written account requested by Squire Trelawney?
- A. Treasure Island
- B. The Grapes of Wrath
- C. Doctor Zhivago
- D. The Leopard
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Treasure Island
Did you know? Stevenson frames Treasure Island as Jim Hawkins's memoir.
27.Which novel follows children born at the hour of India's independence?
- A. The Sound and the Fury
- B. Treasure Island
- C. The Sun Also Rises
- D. Midnight's Children
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Midnight's Children
Did you know? Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children won the 1981 Booker Prize.
28.Which novel opens amid the smell of roses in Basil Hallward's studio?
- A. The Picture of Dorian Gray
- B. Sister Carrie
- C. Great Expectations
- D. Dead Souls
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The Picture of Dorian Gray
Did you know? Wilde opens Dorian Gray in the studio where the portrait is painted.
29.Which novel won the Booker Prize in 2013?
- A. The Luminaries
- B. Catch-22
- C. Vernon God Little
- D. Hopscotch
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The Luminaries
Did you know? Catton won at twenty-eight, the youngest Booker laureate to date.
30.Which novel won the Booker Prize in 2003?
- A. Vernon God Little
- B. Buddenbrooks
- C. The Stone Diaries
- D. The Call of the Wild
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Vernon God Little
Did you know? DBC Pierre's satirical debut took the 2003 Booker.
31.Which novel won the Booker Prize in 1990?
- A. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
- B. Sacred Hunger
- C. Midnight's Children
- D. Possession
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Possession
Did you know? Byatt's Possession follows scholars tracing two Victorian poets.
32.Which novel follows twins Rahel and Estha in Kerala?
- A. The God of Small Things
- B. Pride and Prejudice
- C. Cyrano de Bergerac
- D. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
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The God of Small Things
Did you know? The God of Small Things (1997) won the Booker Prize.
33.Which novel follows American expatriates from Paris to Pamplona?
- A. Pride and Prejudice
- B. Great Expectations
- C. The Sun Also Rises
- D. The Plague
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The Sun Also Rises
Did you know? The Sun Also Rises (1926) made Hemingway famous as a voice of the Lost Generation.
34.Which novel opens with a letter from an Arctic explorer?
- A. A Farewell to Arms
- B. Treasure Island
- C. The Kite Runner
- D. Frankenstein
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Frankenstein
Did you know? Walton's letters frame Victor Frankenstein's tale.
35.Which novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1999?
- A. The Hours
- B. Cyrano de Bergerac
- C. The English Patient
- D. Things Fall Apart
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The Hours
Did you know? Cunningham's The Hours weaves a day in Woolf's own life into fiction.
36.Which novel closes with "boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past"?
- A. Their Eyes Were Watching God
- B. A Christmas Carol
- C. The Great Gatsby
- D. Ulysses
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The Great Gatsby
Did you know? Gatsby's closing line ranks among the most quoted in American fiction.
37.Which novel follows Florentino Ariza's fifty-year devotion?
- A. Dangerous Liaisons
- B. Love in the Time of Cholera
- C. Kim
- D. Animal Farm
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Love in the Time of Cholera
Did you know? García Márquez published Love in the Time of Cholera in 1985.
38.Which novel follows Janie Crawford through three marriages in Florida?
- A. Their Eyes Were Watching God
- B. Animal Farm
- C. A Farewell to Arms
- D. The Plague
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Their Eyes Were Watching God
Did you know? Zora Neale Hurston wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God in seven weeks.
39.Which novel follows Josef K., arrested without being told his crime?
- A. David Copperfield
- B. The Good Earth
- C. The Trial
- D. Wolf Hall
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The Trial
Did you know? Kafka's The Trial was published posthumously in 1925.
40.Which novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988?
- A. David Copperfield
- B. Beloved
- C. The Stone Diaries
- D. The Jungle Book
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Beloved
Did you know? Morrison's Beloved took the 1988 Pulitzer.

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