Russian, French, Postcolonial, Australian, Canadian And Miscellaneous Literature – (Previous Year Questions NET | GATE)

In a collection of essays Orhan Pamuk shares how he writes his novels, tells about his friendship with his daughter, talks about his loneliness and happiness. Identify the text :
(A) Other Colors
(B) The Silent House
(C) The Black Book
(D) The White Castle
Ans: (A)

What is the subject of Ivan’s controversial essay in Brothers Karamazov?
(A) Transubstantiation
(B) The evils of clergy
(C) The Eucharist
(D) Ecclesiastical courts
Ans: (D)

The novel tells the story of twin brothers, Waldo, the man of reason and intellect, and Arthur, the innocent half-wit, the way their lives are inextricably intertwined. Which is the novel?
(A) The Tree of Man
(B) Voss
(C) The Solid Mandala
(D) The Vivisector
Ans: (C)

Which of the following novels is not by Patrick White ?
(A) The Vivisector
(B) The Tree of Man
(C) Voss
(D) Oscar and Lucienda
Ans: (D)

“Magic Realism” is closely associated with
(A) Italo Calvino
(B) Gabriel Garcia Marquez
(C) Anita Desai
(D) Rohinton Mistry
Ans: (B)

 Australian aborigines receive a sympathetic treatment in :
(A) Les Murray
(B) Gwen Harwood
(C) Judith Wright
(D) A.D. Hope
Ans: (C)

Which among the following novels is not written by Margaret Atwood ?
(A) Surfacing
(B) The Blind Assassin
(C) The Handmaid’s Tale
(D) The Stone Angel
Ans: (D)

Margaret Atwood’s Survival makes a case for :
(A) Canadian literary studies
(B) Canadian nationalism
(C) The future of Canadian literature
(D) The past of Canadian literature
Ans: (C)

Who of the following authors represents the Sri Lankan diaspora ?
(A) Cyril Dabydeen
(B) Michael Ondaatje
(C) Arnold H. Itwaru
(D) M.G. Vassanji
Ans: (B)

Margaret Laurence is a novelist from :
(A) Australia
(B) The U.S.A.
(C) Canada
(D) Britain
Ans: (C)

The first Canadian poet is :
(A) Charles Sangster
(B) Oliver Goldsmith
(C) Charles Heavysege
(D) Alexander Machlachlan
Ans: (A)

Who among the following is NOT an Australian writer ?
(A) Morris West
(B) Patrick White
(C) Thomas Keneally
(D) Bill Pearson
Ans: (D)

Edward Said’s well-known book Orientalism was published in
(A) 1978
(B) 1968
(C) 2008
(D) 1988
Ans: (A)

“The Books You Needn’t Read, the Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading, Books Read Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category of Books Read Before Being Written …”
The above extract is taken from
(A) Jorge Luis Borges’s “The Library of Babel”
(B) Italo Colvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller
(C) Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose
(D) Francis Bacon’s “Of Studies”
Ans: (B)

The term ‘magic realism’ was first introduced by :
(A) Hannah Arendt
(B) Franz Roh
(C) Jean Arp
(D) Peter Behrens
Ans: (B)

Match the pairs of authors and their works according to the code given :
(Authors)
i. Alexander Dumas
ii. Honore de Balzac
iii. Gustav Flaubert
iv. Marcel Proust

(Works)
1. Remembrance of Things Past
2. Madame Bovary
3. The Human Comedy
4. The Count of Monte Christo

Codes :
i ii iii iv
(A) 4 3 2 1
(B) 1 2 3 4
(C) 2 1 4 3
(D) 3 4 1 2
Ans: (A)

Which of the following statements best applies to Anna Karenina ?
1. Among her most prominent qualities are her passionate spirit and determination to live life on her own terms.
2. She accepts the exile to which she has been condemned.
3. She is a victim of Russian patriarchal system.
4. Anna is deeply devoted to her family and children.
(A) 1 and 2 are correct
(B) 2 and 3 are correct
(C) 1 and 3 are correct
(D) 1, 3 and 4 are correct
Ans: (D)

Match the pairs of authors and their works according to the code given :
(Authors)
i. Vladimir Nabokov
ii. Italo Calvino
iii. Umberto Eco
iv. Emile Zola

(Works)
1. Germinal
2. Foucault’s Pendulum
3. If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller
4. Lolita

Codes :
i ii iii iv
(A) 3 1 4 2
(B) 4 3 2 1
(C) 1 2 3 4
(D) 2 4 1 3
Ans: (B)

Albert Camus, in his essay, ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ conveys :
1. The concept of Naturalism
2. The Absurdity of Human Existence
3. The Futility of all Human Endeavour
4. The concept of Existentialism
(A) 1, 2 and 3 are correct
(B) 2, 3 and 4 are correct
(C) 1, 2 and 4 are correct
(D) 1, 3 and 4 are correct
Ans: (B)

In one of her novels, Margaret Atwood demonstrated the potentially ‘Cannibalistic’ nature of human relationships. Identify the novel :
(A) Surfacing
(B) Lady Oracle
(C) Life Before Man
(D) The Edible Woman
Ans: (D)

In Mann’s Death in Venice, death of the protagonist occurs
(A) in a bar
(B) in a beach
(C) in a church
(D) on the highway
Ans: (B)

Given below are two statements, one labelled as Assertion (A) and the other as Reason (R).
Assertion (A) : Spivak sees the project of colonialism as characterized by what Foucault had called ‘epistemic violence’, the imposition of a given set of beliefs over another.
Reason (R) : Spivak suggests that participation in the political process – access to citizenship, becoming a voter – will help to mobilize the subaltern on “the long road to hegemony.”
In the context of the two statements, which one of the following is correct :
(A) Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is the correct explanation of (A).
(B) Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is not the correct explanation of (A).
(C) (A) is true but (R) is false.
(D) (A) is false but (R) is true.
Ans: (B)

When Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author opens the audience find the producer attempting to stage a play. What is the title of this play ?
(A) “Rites of Performance”
(B) “Rules of the Game”
(C) “Tonight We Stage a Play”
(D) “Modes of Acting”
Ans: (B)

Assertion (A) : The world does not become raceless or will not become unracialized by assertion. The act of enforcing racelessness in literary discourse is itself a racial act.
Reason (R) : Pouring rhetorical acid on the fingers of a black hand may indeed destroy the prints, but not the hand. Besides, what happens, in that violent, self- serving act of erasure, to the hands, the fingers, the fingerprints of the one who does the pouring ? Do they remain acid-free ? The literature itself suggests otherwise.
In the context of the statements above,
(a) (A) makes complete sense in the light of (R).
(b) (A) makes complete sense regardless of (R).
(c)Neither (A) nor (R) makes complete sense.
(d) (R) challenges the view advanced in (A).
Ans: (a)

Writing his most influential play, August Strindberg called it “My most beloved drama, the child of my greatest suffering.” The play is :
(a) A Dream Play
(b) Miss Julie
(c) The Bridal Crown
(d) The Dance of Death
Ans: (a)

Which of the following statements about Thomas Mann’s novels is true ?
a. Buddenbrooks is a family saga set in the early decades of the twentieth century.
b. Aschenbach, the writer protagonist in Death in Venice, is preoccupied with classicism, especially with classical ideals of male beauty.
c. In his second winter at the sanatorium, Hans Castorp, protagonist of The Magic Mountain
gets lost in a blizzard during a solitary skiing expedition.
d. Adrian Leverkuhn, the modern day Faustus in Mann’s Doctor Faustus is a musician. The right combination according to the code is :
(A) Only (a) and (c) are correct
(B) Only (b) and (d) are correct
(C) (b), (c) and (d) are correct
(D) (a), (b) and (d) are correct
Ans: (C)

The commedia dell’arte originated in Italy in the sixteenth century. Which of the following descriptions are the most appropriate ?
a. Tears alternating with crude laughter
b. Comedy of the guild or by the professionals in the “art”
c. Plautine comedy alternating with ritualistic manoeuvres
d. Improvised comedy that follows a scenario rather than written dialogue The right combination according to the code is :
(A) (a) and (b)
(B) (b) and (d)
(C) (a) and (c)
(D) (b) and (c)
Ans: (B)

Who among the following characters of The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov dies in the final scene ?
(A) Anya
(B) Firs
(C) Varya
(D) Lopakhin
Ans: (B)

Who wrote The History of Australian Literature in 1961 ?
(A) Randolph Stow
(B) H. M. Green
(C) Handel Richardson
(D) Francis Adam
Ans: (B)

What was remarkable about the poet F. T. Marinetti’s first Futurist Manifesto in Le Figaro ?
(A) It resounded like the monotonous beating of a big drum that filled the air with muffled shocks and lingering vibration.
(B) It proclaimed that someone must go on writing for those who were still convinced of the future for which they had taken up arms.
(C) It blasted the dead weight of “museums, libraries, and academics,” glorifying “the beauty of speed.”
(D) It declared that man, the individual, is an infinite reservoir of possibilities; and if man can so rearrange society by the destruction of oppressive disorder, then the possibilities have a future.
Ans: (C)

In Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa one morning found himself changed in his bed to a monstrous kind of vermin. The most difficult thing for Samsa was :
(A) to look at his image in the mirror
(B) to remember what happened the day before
(C) to communicate with anyone
(D) to brush his teeth
Ans: (C)

Identify the individual who is a nihilist from the following :
(A) Pechorin in A Hero of Our Times
(B) Bazarov in Fathers and Sons
(C) Levin in Anna Karenina
(D) Oblomov in Oblomov
Ans: (B)

Which of these works in nineteenth-century Russian fiction originated the type of a Superfluous Man ?
(A) The Diary of a Superfluous Man
(B) A Hero of our Own Times
(C) Eugene Onegin
(D) Deal Souls
Ans: (C)

The story is grounded in the forbidden nature of Achenbach’s Obsession with a young boy; its author ultimately links the obsession with death, disease and esthetic disintegration. The author of the story is :
(A) Goethe
(B) Mann
(C) Borges
(D) Proust
Ans: (B)

Listed below are the titles of some influential books by Frank Kermode. Identify which one of the titles that does NOT belong to the set.
(A) The Sense of an Ending
(B) Not Entitled -A Memoir
(C) The Genesis of Secrecy
(D) The Great Code : The Bible amid Literature
Ans: (D)

Which of the following plays by Henrik Ibsen deals with the perils that await the emancipated woman in a society which is not ready to accept her ?
(A) A Doll’s House
(B) An Enemy of the People
(C) Hedda Gabler
(D) Pillars of Society
Ans: (C)

Which character of Henrik Ibsen speaks the following lines : “The life of a normally constituted idea is generally about seventeen or eighteen years, at the most twenty?”
(A) Nora in A Doll’s House
(B) Dr. Thomas Stockman in An Enemy of the People
(C) John Rosmer in Rosmerscholm
(D) Oswald in Ghosts
Ans: (B)

Which work by Franz Kafka is also known as The Man Who Disappeared?
(A) The Castle
(B) “Metamorphosis”
(C) “In the Penal Colony”
(D) Amerika
Ans: (D)

What part of Canada is Alice Munro most famous for depicting?
(A) Vancouver
(B) Montreal
(C) Ontario
(D) Quebec
Ans: (C)

Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author deliberately blurs the boarder lines between the world of the theatre and the world of ‘real life’ by carefully chiselled dialogues like :
“Don’t you feel the ground beneath your feet as you reflect that this ‘you’ which you feel today, all this present reality of yours, is destined to seem a mere illusion to you tomorrow?”
Who is the speaker? Who is it addressed to?
(A) Stepdaughter to Father
(B) Father to Stage Manager
(C) Stage Manager to Director
(D) Mother to Director
Ans: (B)

 In Crime and Punishment which character speaks the following words. Who/what are they addressed to?
“I waited for you impatiently…. all this blasted psychology is a double-edged weapon.”
(A) Svidrigailov to the pistol with which he shoots himself
(B) Katherine Ivanovna to Marmeladov
(C) Porfiry Petrovich to Raskolnikov
(D) Raskolnikov to the Bible he finds in the prison cell in Siberia
Ans: (C)

In the opening pages of one of Thomas Mann’s novels we can see space itself becoming a form of time : “Space, like time, engenders forgetfulness but it does so by setting us bodily free from our surroundings and giving us back our primitive unattached state.”
Which is the novel?
(A) Doctor Faustus
(B) Death in Venice
(C) The Confessions of Felix Krull
(D) The Magic Mountain
Ans: (D)

Who in his preface to Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent makes the following remark?
“the achievement of modern art is that it has ceased to recognize the categories of tragic and comic or the dramatic classifications ‘tragedy’ and ‘comedy’, and views of life as tragicomedy.”
(A) August Strindberg
(B) Luigi Pirandello
(C) D.H. Lawrence
(D) Thomas Mann
Ans: (D)

Thomas Mann described the theme of one of his fictional works as “the fascination of death, the triumph of disorder in a life founded on order.” Which of his works was he referring to?
(A) Buddenbrooks
(B) Death in Venice
(C) The Magic Mountain
(D) Doctor Faustus
Ans: (B)

The Canadian Nobel Laureate Alice Munro is known for her
(A) novels
(B) poems
(C) short stories
(D) novellas
Ans: (C)

Which character in Crime and Punishment speaks of St. Petersburg as a city of half crazy people filled with gloomy, harsh and strange influences?
(A) Razumikhin
(B) Peter Petrovich Luzhyn
(C) Raskolnikov
(D) Svidrigailov
Ans: (D)

Most of the titles of Aldous Huxley’s novels are taken from various literary works. Match the titles of his novels with the works from which they have been borrowed :
I. Brave New World A. Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
II. The Doors of Perception B. Marlowe’s Edward II
III. Antic Hay C. Wordsworth’s “The Tables Turned”
IV. Those Barren Leaves D. Shakespeare’s The Tempest
The right code according to the key is :
I II III IV
(a) D C A B
(b) D A B C
(c) C D A B
(d) B C D A
Answer: (b)

“There is no set and there are no wings; the stage is empty and in almost total darkness. This is in order that right from the beginning the audience shall receive the impression of being present not at a performance of a carefully rehearsed play, but at a performance of a play that suddenly happens.”
Which of the following plays have the above stage directions?
(A) Eugene Ionesco’s The Chairs
(B) August Strindberg’s A Dream Play
(C) Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author
(D) Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape
Ans: (C)

Who among the following postcolonial critics worked on the fiction of Joseph Conrad in his/her early career?
(A) Edward Said
(B) G.C. Spivak
(C) Homi Bhabha
(D) Dipesh Chakrabarty
Ans: (A)

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In The Trial what is the main character Joseph K’s job?
(A) He works in a bank
(B) He’s a politician
(C) He works in a government office
(D) He is an entomologist
Ans: (A)

The Australian poet A.D. Hope is best known for his
I. elegies
II. Satires
III. Sonnets
IV. Doggerel verses
The right combination according to the code is
(A) I and II
(B) II and IV
(C) I and III
(D) II and III
Ans: (A)

The term diaspora was originally applied to the following ethnic group :
(A) Jews
(B) Muslims
(C) Hindus
(D) French Canadians
Ans: (A)

In Herman Melville’s well-known story
“Bartleby the Scrivener”, what does the word “scrivener” mean?
(A) Pasting clerks in a Dead Letter Office
(B) Articled clerks in an accountant’s office
(C) Clerks who copy legal documents by hand.
(D) Clerks who serve as personal assistants to judges.
Ans: (C)

“Medicine is my lawful wife” ………….. once said “and literature is my mistress.”
(A) Franz Kafka
(B) Leo Tolstoy
(C) Anton Chekhov
(D) Albert Camus
Ans: (C)

Who makes the following speech in Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts?
“I almost think we are all ghosts, all of us …
It isn’t just what we have inherited from
our father and mother that walks in us.
It’s all sorts of dead ideas, and all sorts of
old and obsolete beliefs. They’re not alive
in us; but they are lodged in us and we
can never free ourselves from them ….
There must be ghosts the whole country over,
as thick as the sands of the sea.”
(A) Mrs. Alving
(B) Engstrand
(C) Pastor Manders
(D) Oswald
Ans: (A)

Miguel de Cervantes’s inimitable Don Quixote, foreshadows metafictional moorings when the novelist,
(a) says that the first chapters of the narrative are recreated from the Archive of La Mancha
(b) says that it is a faithful rendering of a Catalan text in Spanish
(c) says that part of it has been translated from the Arabic by the Moorish author Cide Hamete Benengeli
(d) says that he is rewriting the history of a medieval knight altering the heroic vein with a farcical mode
The right combination according to the code is :
(A) (a) and (b)
(B) (b) and (c)
(C) (a) and (c)
(D) (b) and (d)
Ans: (C)

Tereza, in Milan Kundera’s novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, troubled by Tomas’s promiscuity, falls an easy prey to jealousy, fear and nightmares. Which of the following are the terrible dreams she has ?
(a) She dreams of cats attacking her.
(b) She dreams of wolves attacking her.
(c) She dreams that she is dead and buried in a common grave where she lies with the corpses of strangers.
(d) She dreams that she is dead, stripped of her clothes and plagued by other naked corpses.
The right combination according to the code is :
(A) (a) and (c)
(B) (a) and (d)
(C) (b) and (c)
(D) (b) and (d)
Ans: (B)

In which poem does Judith Wright lament the erasure of native culture in the following lines ?
“The song is gone; the dance
Is secret with the dancers in the earth,
The ritual useless, and the tribal story
Lost in an alien tale”.
(A) “The Five Senses”
(B) “Legend”
(C) “Bullocky”
(D) “Bora Ring”
Ans: (D)

Which one of Alice Munro’s short stories is about the domestic erosions of Alzheimer’s disease ?
(A) “Dear Life”
(B) “Runaway”
(C) “The Bear Came Over the Mountain”
(D) “Dance of the Happy Shades”
Ans: (C)

What illusion does Lyuba Ranevsky in Anton Chekhov’s play The Cherry Orchard have as she looks at the orchard ?
(A) She sees it gleaming with a bluish aura.
(B) She sees her dead mother walking through the orchard.
(C) She sees it full of ripe fruits without a trace of leaves.
(D) She sees her childhood friends playing in the orchard.
Ans: (B)

In the first scene in which Goethe’s Faust appears he is dejected by the study of Philosophy, Law, Medicine and Theology, turns to Magic art to acquire infinite knowledge. But he fails and in desperation attempts to commit suicide, but refrains at the final moment. What prevents Faust from committing suicide ?
(A) The intervention of archangel Gabriel
(B) His attendant Wagner persuades him to revoke the decision
(C) The chiming of the bells announcing Easter festivities
(D) Mephistopheles appears and offers to initiate him into magic art
Ans: (C)

Who among the following is not a diasporic writer?
(A) Beryl Bainbridge
(B) Timothy Mo
(C) Hanif Kureishi
(D) Sam Selvon
Ans: (A)

What happens to the character Boy at the end of Luigi Pirandello’s play Six Characters in Search of an Author?
(A) He drowns in the fountain.
(B) He is shot dead by the Father.
(C) He leaves the stage alone.
(D) He commits suicide.
Ans: (D)

Which character in Anton Chekhov’s play, The Cherry Orchard, first suggests the selling of the orchard?
(A) Trofimov
(B) Yephikodov
(C) Lopakhin
(D) Varya
Ans: (C)

Who identified “strangled articulateness” as a theme in Canadian writing?
(A) Margaret Atwood
(B) Northrop Frye
(C) Michael Ondaatjee
(D) Joy Kogawa
Ans: (B)

The quintessentially metafictional novel, If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino has alternate chapters with chapter numbers and titles. Which of the following are the titles of the chapters in the novel?
I. Looks Down in the Gathering Shadow
II. In a Network of Lines that Enlace
III. In a Network of Lines that Interface
IV. What Story there Awaits its End?
The right combination according to the code is
(a) I and II
(b) I and IV
(c) III and IV
(d) II and IV
Ans: (a)

As Gunter Grass’s novel The Tin Drum opens we find Oskar Matzerath
(a) on the war front entertaining the soldiers as part of a band of dwarfs.
(b) in a mental hospital writing his story.
(c) admitted in a hospital after his fatal fall in the wine cellar.
(d) watching a ball in which the young ladies ignore his presence.
Ans: (b)

Symbolist movement was influenced by :
(A) Poetic theory of Edgar Allan Poe
(B) Stephane Mallarme’s Poetry
(C) Prose of Emerson
(D) Ezra Pound’s Cantos
Ans: (B)

The label ‘Diasporic Writer’ can be applied to
I. Meena Alexander
II. Arundhati Roy
III. Kiran Desai
IV. Shashi Deshpande
The correct combination for the statement, according to the code, is
(A) I and IV are correct.
(B) II and III are correct.
(C) I, II and IV are correct.
(D) I and III are correct.
Ans: (D)

There are two lists given below.Match the authors in List – I withtheir nationality in List – II by choosing the right option against the code.
(I) Patrick White
(II) Nadine Gordimer
(III) Margaret Atwood
(IV) Keri Hulme

(1) Canada
(2) New Zealand
(3) Australia
(4) South Africa
Code :
(I) (II) (III) (IV)
(A) (2) (1) (4) (3)
(B) (4) (3) (2) (1)
(C) (3) (4) (1) (2)
(D) (3) (2) (4) (1)
Ans: (C)

Who of the following poets is Australian?
(A) Austin Clarke
(B) Judith Wright
(C) Edwin Muir
(D) Derek Walcott
Ans: (B)

The following are two lists of writers and their works. Match them:
(Writers)
I. Katherine Susannah Prichard
II. Colin Johnson
III. Sally Morgan
IV. Jack Davis
(Works)
1. Barungin
2. My Place
3. Wild Cat Falling
4. Coonardoo
Which is the correct combination according to the above code?
I II III IV
(A) 3 2 1 4
(B) 4 3 2 1
(C) 2 1 4 3
(D) 1 4 3 2
Ans: (B)

The following are two lists of writers and their works. Match them:
(Works)
1. Drums of My Flesh
2. Trishanku
3. Jasmine
4. Anil’s Ghost
(Writers)
I. Uma Parameswaran
II. Bharati Mukherjee
III. Michael Ondaatje
IV. Cyril Dabydeen
Which is the correct combination according to the above code?
I II III IV
(A) 1 3 2 4
(B) 3 4 1 2
(C) 2 3 4 1
(D) 4 1 3 2
Ans: (C)

Match the following lists:
(Novelists)
I. Margaret Laurence
II. Margaret Atwood
III. Sinclair Ross
IV. Thomas King
(Novels)
1. Surfacing
2. The Stone Angel
3. Medicine River
4. As for Me and My House
Which is the correct combination according to the code?
I II III IV
(A) 1 4 3 2
(B) 3 2 1 4
(C) 4 3 2 1
(D) 2 1 4 3
Ans: (D)

Which of the following writers writes from Canada ?
(A) V.S. Naipaul
(B) Margaret Atwood
(C) Derek Walcott
(D) James Joyce
Ans: (B)

Yasmine Gooneratne’s The Pleasures of Conquest termed as a postcolonial novel of the nineties is ironically enough set in the tropical island nation of
(A) Sri Lanka
(B) Fiji
(C) The Caribbean
(D) Amnesia
Ans: (D)

Which of the following is not an Asian – Canadian writer ?
(A) Shauna Singh Badlwin
(B) Himani Banerjee
(C) Joy Kogawa
(D) Meena Alexander
Ans: (D)

Patrick White published two novels in the 1950s giving the eras of pioneering and exploration in Australian history an epic, ironic and psychological dimension. The novels are:
(a) A Fringe of Leaves
(b) The Tree of Man
(c) Voss
(d) The Aunt’s Story
The right combination according to the code is:
(A) (a) and (b)
(B) (b) and (c)
(C) (c) and (a)
(D) (c) and (d)
Ans: (B)

What significance do we attach to the publication of I Am an Indian in Canada ?
(A) The title refers to the autobiography of an unknown Indian writer longing for the South Asian countryside
(B) The first ever account of ethnic conflicts within Canada
(C) The first anthology of Native Canadian writing following the Civil Rights Movement of the1960s
(D) The first anthology of writers afflicted by class and gender differences in Canada of the late 1970s
Ans: (C)

Margaret Atwood has tried a revisionist writing of a crucial scene in Hamlet called “Gertrude Talks Back”. The scene in Atwood opens with a reference to the name of an implied listener. Who is this implied listener?
(A) Hamlet
(B) Ophelia
(C) Polonius
(D) Claudius
Ans: (A)

Patrick White’s classic work Voss is based on the story of a …………… explorer.
(A) Flemish
(B) Australian
(C) German
(D) Spanish
Ans: (C)

 Which of the following novels has the death of General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, the former President of Pakistan, at its centre?
(A) The Kite Runner
(B) A Case of Exploding Mangoes
(C) Shame
(D) Kartography
Ans: (B)

Identify the first novel written by Patrick White :
(A) The Living and the Dead
(B) The Tree of Man
(C) Happy Valley
(D) The Aunt’s Story
Ans: (C)

Shyam Selvadurai’s Funny Boy is a
(A) Picaresque novel
(B) Epistolary novel
(C) Diary novel
(D) Coming-of-age novel
Ans: (D)

Which novel by Patrick White is based on the story of Ludwig Leichhardt, the Prussian naturalist who explored Australia in the mid-1840s, in which White’s fictional hero says when asked about navigation – “The Map? I will first make it” ?
(A) The Tree of Man
(B) Voss
(C) Riders in the Chariot
(D) The Solid Mandala
Ans: (B)

This Australian poet was raised in New South Wales and grew up in rural Australian landscape. In 1946 she published her first book of poems. In 1962, she became cofounder and president of the Wild Life Preservation Society of Queensland and served as its president several times thereafter. Identify the poet.
(A) Dorothy Hewett
(B) Nettie Palmer
(C) Judith Wright
(D) Amy Witting
Ans: (C)

Which of the following novels by Margaret Atwood depicts the historical event of the notorious murders committed in 1843 ?
(A) The Blind Assassin
(B) Alias Grace
(C) Cats Eye
(D) Oryx and Crake
Ans: (B)

 In how many parts did Cervantes publish his novel, Don Quixote ?
(A) Three
(B) Five
(C) Two
(D) Twelve
Ans: (C)

Leo Tolstoy`s Anna Karenina closing lines present…
(A) a sad reflection on the unfortunate suicide of Anna which should have been averted
(B) the enlivening freshness of a rain which has been threatening to break out
(C) Levin`s affirmation that whatever happens to him, life is not meaningless but unquestionably meaningful
(D) Vronsky`s lament over the death of Anna which ends on a positive note, affirming the human tendency to pass over the tragic events with hope
Ans: (C)

In the spring of 1941, Nikos Kazantzakis embarked on one of his most ambitious projects, a play known as Yangtze. What English/Greek title is it now known as ?
(A) Buddha
(B) Brobdingnag
(C) Zoroaster
(D) Zorba
Ans: (A)

 The enigmatic castle which K. attempts to reach in vain in Franz Kafka’s Castle belongs to
(A) Count Westwest
(B) Count Aloofwest
(C) Count Eastwest
(D) Count Stangewest
Ans: (A)

David Malouf’s novel Ransom is based on
(A) a war memoir by Edmund Blunden
(B) an episode in The Mahabharata
(C) a war poem by Yevgeny Yevtushenko
(D) an episode in the Trojan war
Ans: (D)

The titular figure of Federico Garcia Lorca’s elegy “Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias” was
(A) a revolutionary who was associated with Che Guevara
(B) a popular priest and poet
(C) a spy who helped the revolutionaries during the Spanish Civil War
(D) a popular matador and writer
Ans: (D)

In which of his novels does Italo Calvino construct his narrative through a tarot pack of cards and re-interpret the Western canon providing new versions of Oedipus Rex, Faust, Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear?
(A) The Castle of Crossed Destinations
(B) Our Ancestors
(C) Invisible Cities
(D) The Path to the Nest of Spiders
Ans:  (A)