1.

Which of Whitman’s contemporaries famously praised “Leaves of Grass” as “the most

extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom America has yet contributed”?

A. henry wadsworth longfellow

b. henry david thoreau

c. oliver wendell holmes

d. ralph waldo emerson

Answer: (d) Emerson’s Letter to Walt Whitman, 21st July 1855. I am not blind to the worth of
the wonderful gift of “Leaves of Grass.” I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and
wisdom that America has yet contributed. I am very happy in reading it, as great power
makes us happy.

2. Which work is known as the pioneer in the African-American writings?

a) Poems on Various Subjects

b) The Contrast

c) Incidents in the Life of A Slave Girl

d) The Power of Sympathy

Ans (A) Poems on Various Subjects is a collection of 39 poems written by Phillis Wheatley,
the first professional African-American woman poet in America and the first African-
American woman whose writings were published.

3. Which is the first known American comedy?

a) The Power of Sympathy

b) Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass

c) Incidents in the life of a Slave Girl

d) The Contrast

Ans (D) The Contrast is the first comedy written by an American citizen that was
professionally produced.[1] The play begins with a prologue written in heroic couplets. The
play itself, a comedy of manners, evaluates home-made versus foreign goods and ideas.

4. The American Civil War was fought between ??

a) The South and the North

b) The east and the west

c) The south and the west

d) The north and the east

Ans (A) The American Civil War (1861–1865 also known by other names) was a civil war in
the United States between the Union (“the North”) and the Confederacy (“the South”),
which had been formed by states that had seceded from the Union.

5. Who among the following is a regional novelist from Louisiana?

a) Mark Twain

b) Nathaniel Hawthorne

c) Hermann Melville

d) Kate Chopin

Ans (D) Kate was an American author of short stories and novels based in Louisiana. She is
considered by scholars to have been a forerunner of American 20th-
century feminist authors of Southern or Catholic background and she is one of the more
frequently read and recognized writers of Louisiana Creole heritage.
6. The flamboyant and pleasure seeking 1920s are sometimes referred to as ??

a) The Lost generation

b) The Jazz age

c) American romanticism

d) The Transcendentalism

Ans (B) The novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald termed the 1920s “the Jazz Age.” With its earthy
rhythms, fast beat, and improvisational style, jazz symbolized the decade’s spirit of
liberation.

7. Jack London is a novelist belongs to a movement called ??

a) Realism

b) Surrealism

c) Naturalism

d) Romanticism

Ans (C.) Naturalism is a literary movement from the late 19 th and early 20th centuries that
analyzed human nature through a scientific, objective, and detached perspective.

8. Who wrote “I Dwell in Possibility”?

a) Walt Whitman

b) Robert Frost

c) E. A. Robinson

d) Emily Dickinson
Ans (D) The key theme of the poem ‘I Dwell in Possibility’ by Emily Dickinson is that poetry is
superior to other genres of literature. The speaker describes dwelling in the realm of poetry
as a more exquisite and expansive experience than dwelling in the realm of prose.

9. What kind of government does Salem have in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible?

a. Democracy

b. Theocracy

c. Monarchy

d. Kleptocracy

Ans (B) Theocracy is a form of government in which one or more deities are recognized as
supreme ruling authorities, giving divine guidance to human intermediaries who manage
the government’s daily affairs.

10. What does the novel To Kill a Mocking Bird contrast its grand, Gothic themes with?

A. Philosophical doctrine

B. Themes of romance

C. Day-to-day details of small town life

D. A lot of images of nature

Ans (C.) To Kill a Mockingbird is both a young girl’s coming-of-age story and a darker drama
about the roots and consequences of racism and prejudice, probing how good and evil can
coexist within a single community or individual.

11. Who says “Earth is the right place for love” ?

(A) Silvia plath

(B) Langston Hughes

© Wallace Stevens

(D) Robert Frost

Ans (D) In one of his best-known poems, after describing the boyhood longing to climb a
birch tree toward heaven, he tells us that the tree will eventually dip its top and set me
down again, since Earth’s the right place for love.

12. Absalom, Absalom is a novel written by ??

(A) Steinback

(B) Faulkner

© Hemingway

(D) Fitzgerald

Ans (B) Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! Is a novel about the meaning of history, and about
the extreme pressure of the past, particularly in the South, upon the inhabitants of the
present. More importantly, it is about the doubtful process of coming to know, reconstruct,
and come to grips with history.

13. Rabbit Angstrom Novels are written by ??

(A) Harper Lee

(B) John Updike

© Henry Miller

(D) R. Ellison

Ans (B) John Updike is a famous American writer. Hundreds of his stories, reviews, and
poems appeared in The New Yorker starting in 1954. He also wrote regularly for The New
York Review of Books. His most famous work is his “Rabbit” series which chronicles the life
of the middle-class everyman Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom over the course of several decades,
from young adulthood to death.
14. Who wrote the short story “The Tell-Tale Heart”?

A) Edgar Allan Poe

B) Nathaniel Hawthorne

C) Herman Melville

D) Washington Irving

Ans (A) The Tell-Tale Heart” is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first
published in 1843. It is told by an unnamed narrator who endeavors to convince the reader
of the narrator’s sanity while simultaneously describing a murder the narrator committed.

15. Which American author is known for his epic novel depicting the lives of the Joad family
during the Dust Bowl era?

A) John Steinbeck

B) Ernest Hemingway

C) F. Scott Fitzgerald

D) William Faulkner

Answer: A) The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck was published in 1939 during the Great
Depression and Oklahoma Dustbowl. The novel tells the story of the Joad family who
travels to California from Oklahoma because landlords evicted tenant farmers due to the
drought and dust storms.

16. Which American playwright wrote the play set in a stifling apartment in New Orleans,
featuring characters like Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski?

A) Tennessee Williams

B) Arthur Miller

C) Eugene O’Neill
D) Edward Albee

Ans (A) The play The Streetcar Named Desire dramatizes the experiences of Blanche
DuBois, a former Southern belle who, after encountering a series of personal losses, leaves
her once-prosperous situation to move into a shabby apartment in New Orleans rented by
her younger sister Stella and brother-in-law Stanley.

17. Which American poet is known for her unconventional style, including the use of
dashes and irregular capitalization, and lived much of her life in seclusion?

A) Sylvia Plath

B) Maya Angelou

C) Emily Dickinson

D) Langston Hughes

Answer: C) Emily was an American poet best known for her eccentric personality and her
frequent themes of death and mortality. Although she was a prolific writer, only a few of her
poems were published during her lifetime.

18. Who wrote the novel about a young boy named Holden Caulfield who grapples with
alienation and the phoniness of the adult world?

A) J.D. Salinger

B) John Steinbeck

C) Jack Kerouac

D) F. Scott Fitzgerald

Answer: A) The Catcher in the Rye, novel by J.D. Salinger published in 1951. The novel
details two days in the life of 16-year-old Holden Caulfield after he has been expelled from
prep school. Confused and disillusioned, Holden searches for truth and rails against the
“phoniness” of the adult world.
19. Which novel, set in the American South during the Civil War, follows the March sisters
as they navigate the challenges of adolescence and womanhood?

A) "Gone with the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell

B) “Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott

C) “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” by Harriet Beecher Stowe

D) “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain

Answer: B)

20. Who wrote the novel “The House of Mirth,” exploring the social expectations and
constraints faced by women in early 20th-century New York society?

A) Edith Wharton

B) Willa Cather

C) Kate Chopin

D) Gertrude Stein

Ans (A) The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton follows Lily Bart, a 29-year-old socialite trying
to live up to the expectations of others. While society dictates that Lily’s only goal should
be to secure a husband, she secretly wishes to ensure her financial independence.

21. Which American poet is known for his collection “Spoon River Anthology,” a series of
poems written in the form of epitaphs spoken from the grave?

A) Edgar Lee Masters

B) Carl Sandburg

C) Vachel Lindsay

D) Robinson Jeffers
Ans (A) Edgar Lee Masters wrote “Spoon River Anthology,” first published in 1915.

22. Which is the only work by Nathaniel Hawthorne written in first person?

A.) The House of the Seven Gables

B.) The Murders in the Rue Morgue

C.) The Blithedale Romance

D.) The Scarlet letter

Ans (C.) The Blithedale Romance is a novel by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne
published. It is the third major “romance”, as he called the form. Its setting is a utopian
farming commune based on Brook Farm, of which Hawthorne was a founding member and
where he lived in 1841.

23. “So this is the little lady who made this big war.” Who said this ?

A.) Benjamin Franklin

B.) Nathaniel Hawthorne

C.) Abraham Lincoln

D.) Mark Twain

Ans (C.) It is reported that upon being introduced to Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1862,
Abraham Lincoln fondly commented she was “the little woman who wrote the book that
started this great war”.

24. What was the pseudonym of Harriet Jacobs in her work, “Incidents in the Life of a Slave
Girl”?

A.) Linda Brent

B.) Linda Brenet

C.) Linda Cadwell

D.) Linda Lee Cadwell

Ans (A) Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, written by herself is an autobiography by Harriet
Jacobs, a mother and fugitive slave. Jacobs used the pseudonym Linda Brent. The book
documents Jacobs’s life as a slave and how she gained freedom for herself and for her
children.

25. The narrator in ‘The Raven’ mourns the death of ??

A.) Glenove

B.) Riadre

C.) Hetrick

D.) Lenore

Ans (D) Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” is a poem centered around an unnamed narrator’s
journey into madness after realizing he will never forget his lost love Lenore.

26. Who is the author of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? A 20 th Century American absurd
play?

A.) Edward Albee

B.) Eugene Ionesco

C.) Arthur Miller

D.) Samuel Beckett

Ans (A) The play is by Edward Albee. It examines the complexities of the marriage of
middle-aged couple Martha and George. Late one evening, after a university faculty party,
they receive unwitting younger couple Nick and Honey as guests, and draw them into their
bitter and frustrated relationship.
27. Who among the following is NOT part of the Beat Generation?

A) Allen Ginsberg

B) Gary Snyder

C) F. Scott Fitzgerald

D) Neal Cassidy

Ans (C.) The Beat Generation was a group of writers that emerged in the 1950s. They
rejected formalism in poetry and materialism in society. Like the Romantics, they believed
poetry should be personal and accessible.

27. When Slaughter House Five was published, it made a forceful statement against which
conflict?

A. The Cold War

B. The Korean War

C. World War II

D. The Vietnam War

Ans (D) Slaughterhouse-Five is a 1969 semi-autobiographic science fiction-infused anti-

war novel by Kurt Vonnegut. It follows the life experiences of Billy Pilgrim, from his early
years, to his time as an American soldier and chaplain’s assistant during World War II, to
the post-war years.

28. In whose works do we see Ice-berg Principle being used in novels?

A. Gertrude Stein

B. Ernest Hemingway

C. F Scott Fitzgerald

D. Henry Miller
Ans (B) Hemingway is often associated with the “Iceberg Theory” of writing, which
emphasizes the idea that a writer should only reveal a small portion of the story, with the
bulk of the meaning and emotion implied or hinted at.

29. Which among the following novels by John Steinbeck brings to life the intricate details
of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons and their interwoven stories?

A. The Pearl

B. The Grapes of Wrath

C. East of Eden

D. To a God Unknown

Ans (C.) East of Eden is a venomous rivalry between two generations of brothers parallels
the biblical story of Cain and Abel; however, family and friendship help to prevent disaster
by guiding the family to the realization that mankind may be flawed but redemption can be
found.

30. “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading
them”—whose famous quote is this?

A. Ray Bradbury

B. Stephen King

C. Philip K Dick

D. Kurt Vonnegut

Ans (A) Fahrenheit 451, dystopian novel, first published in 1953, that is regarded as
perhaps the greatest work by American author Ray Bradbury and has been praised for its
stance against censorship and its defense of literature as necessary both to the humanity
of individuals and to civilization.

31. Which novel of Truman Capote is labeled as ‘non-fiction novel’?

A. Breakfast at Tiffany’s

B. In Cold Blood

C. Other Stories, Other Rooms

D. None of these

Ans (B) In Cold Blood” is a narrative nonfiction novel. This means that it is a nonfiction work
that uses some of the stylistic elements of fiction (including character development and
scene setting, along with rich, descriptive language) to tell a true story.

32. Which of the following genres is Richard Wright’s Native Son associated with?

A. Satiric novel

B. Suburban novel

C. Picaresque Novel

D. Anthropological novel

Ans (B) Native Son is a Suburban novel written by the American author Richard Wright. It
tells the story of 20-year-old Bigger Thomas, a black youth living in utter poverty in a poor
area on Chicago’s South Side in the 1930s. Thomas accidentally kills a white woman at a
time when racism is at its peak and he pays the price for it.

33. Who is best known for his five book Leather-Stocking Series?

A. RW Emerson

B. Washington Irving

C. Jack London

D. James Fenimore Cooper

Ans (D) The Leatherstocking Tales, series of five novels by James Fenimore Cooper. The
novels constitute a saga of 18th-century life among Indians and white pioneers on the New
York State frontier through their portrayal of the adventures of the main character, Natty
Bumppo, who takes on various names throughout the series.

34. Which among the novels listed below has won Pulitzer Prize?

A. Reservation Blues

B. This Side of Paradise

C. The Woman Warrior

D. House Made of Dawn

Ans (D) House Made of Dawn is a 1968 novel by N. Scott Momaday, widely credited as
leading the way for the breakthrough of Native American literature into the mainstream. It
was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1969, and has also been noted for its
significance in Native American anthropology.

35. Who among the following is not a narrator in The Sound and the Fury?

A. Caddy

B. Benjy

C. Quentin

D. Jason

Ans (A) The story is told in four chapters by four different narrators: Benjy, the youngest
Compson son; Quentin, the oldest son; Jason, the middle son; and Faulkner himself,
acting as an omniscient, third-person narrator who focuses on Dilsey, the Compsons’
servant.

36. What is the name of Patrick White’s novel that tells the story of Theodora Goodman, a
middle-aged single woman who travels to France and then to America after her mother
dies?

A.) Happy Valley

B.) The Aunt’s Story

C.) Riders in the Chariot

D.) Voss

Ans (B)

37. An Imaginary Life is a 1978 novella written by ?

1. Patrick white

2. A.D Hope

3. David Malouf

4. Peter Carey

Ans (C.) It tells the story of the Roman poet Ovid, during his exile in Tomis.

38. Who is the author of “Cloudstreet”?

a) Tim Winton

b) Peter Carey

c) Patrick White

d) David Malouf

Answer: (A) Timothy John Winton AO (born 4 August 1960) is an Australian writer. He has
written novels, children’s books, non-fiction books, and short stories. In 1997, he was
named a Living Treasure by the National Trust of Australia, and has won the Miles Franklin
Award four times.

39. Who is the author of the Australian classic “My Brilliant Career”?

a) Christina Stead
b) Miles Franklin

c) Henry Lawson

d) Peter Carey

Answer: (b) My Brilliant Career is a 1901 novel written by Miles Franklin. It is the first of
many novels by Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin (1879–1954), one of the major Australian
writers of her time.

40. Who is the author of the novel “Anne of Green Gables,” featuring the beloved character
Anne Shirley?

A) Lucy Maud Montgomery

b) Margaret Atwood

c) Alice Munro

d) Michael Ondaatje

Answer: (a) Anne of Green Gables is a 1908 novel by Canadian author Lucy Maud
Montgomery (published as L. M. Montgomery). Written for all ages, it has been considered
a classic children’s novel since the mid-20th century.

41. Who wrote the novel “Alias Grace,” based on the true story of Grace Marks, a young Irish
immigrant convicted of murder in Canada in the 1840s?

A) Margaret Atwood

b) Alice Munro

c) Robertson Davies

d) Yann Martel

Answer: (a) The story is about the notorious 1843 murders of Thomas Kinnear and his
housekeeper Nancy Montgomery in Canada.
42. Who wrote the novel “The Wars,” which follows a young Canadian soldier’s experiences
during World War I?

A) Timothy Findley

b) Michael Ondaatje

c) Margaret Atwood

d) Robertson Davies

Answer: (a) Timothy Irving Frederick Findley was a Canadian novelist and playwright. He
was also informally known by the nickname Tiff or Tiffy, an acronym of his initials.

43. In which novel does Michael Ondaatje blend fact and fiction to recount the lives of the
workers who helped build the Bloor Street Viaduct in Toronto?

A) “Divisadero”

b) “The English Patient”

c) “In the Skin of a Lion”

d) “Warlight”

Answer: © Through fragmented stories and evocative memories, In the Skin of a Lion
recounts the story of its protagonist, Patrick Lewis, and his experiences as a member of the
Canadian working class.

44. In which novel does the character Antoinette Cosway, a Creole heiress in Jamaica,
struggle with her identity and sanity?

A) “The Book of Night Women”

b) “Breath, Eyes, Memory”

c) “Wide Sargasso Sea”

d) “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao”

Answer: © Wide Sargasso Sea is a novel by Jean Rhys that serves as a prequel to Charlotte
Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Set in Jamaica, it tells the story of Antoinette Cosway, a Creole woman
who becomes the first wife of Mr. Rochester. The book explores themes of colonialism,
racial inequality, and the oppression of women.

45. Which Caribbean poet and playwright won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992 for his
work exploring the Caribbean cultural experience?

A) Derek Walcott

b) V.S. Naipaul

c) Jean Rhys

d) Kamau Brathwaite

Answer: (a) The 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Saint Lucian poet Derek
Walcott “for a poetic oeuvre of great luminosity, sustained by a historical vision, the
outcome of a multicultural commitment.”

46. Who is the author of the novel “Annie John,” which tells the coming-of-age story of a
young girl growing up in Antigua?

A) Jamaica Kincaid

b) Edwidge Danticat

c) V.S. Naipaul

d) Derek Walcott

Answer: (a) Jamaica Kincaid (born May 25, 1949, St. John’s, Antigua) is a Caribbean
American writer whose essays, stories, and novels are evocative portrayals of family
relationships and her native Antigua.
47. In which novel does V.S. Naipaul explore the life of Willie Chandran, an Indian man who
struggles with his identity and political beliefs in post-colonial India and England?

A) “A House for Mr. Biswas”

b) “The Mimic Men”

c) “In a Free State”

d) “A Bend in the River”

Answer: (b) The Mimic Men is a novel by British-Trinidadian author V.S. Naipaul, first
published in 1967. Combining elements of both fiction and nonfiction and completed while
Naipaul was writer-in-residence at Uganda’s Makerere University, it is considered one of
Naipaul’s most serious and poetic novels.

48. In which novel does the character Amrith, a young Sri Lankan man, come of age amidst
the backdrop of ethnic tensions and civil war?

A) “Funny Boy”

b) “The Road from Elephant Pass”

c) “Cinnamon Gardens”

d) “Reef”

Answer: (a) Set in Sri Lanka where Selvadurai grew up, Funny Boy is constructed in the form
of six poignant stories about a boy coming to age within a wealthy Tamil family in Colombo.
Between the ages of seven and fourteen, he explores his sexual identity, and encounters
the Sinhala-Tamil tensions leading up to the 1983 riots.

49. Who is the author of the novel “Anil’s Ghost,” which follows the journey of Anil Tissera, a
Sri Lankan forensic anthropologist investigating human rights abuses during the civil war?

a) Shyam Selvadurai

b) Romesh Gunesekera

c) Michael Ondaatje
d) Carl Muller

Answer: © Anil’s Ghost follows the life of Anil Tissera, a native Sri Lankan who left to study
in Britain and then the United States on a scholarship, during which time she has become a
forensic pathologist. She returns to Sri Lanka in the midst of its merciless civil war as part
of a human rights investigation by the United Nations.

50. Who is the author of the novel “Island of a Thousand Mirrors,” which tells the story of
two families—one Tamil and one Sinhala—caught up in the Sri Lankan civil war?

A) Nayomi Munaweera

b) Ameena Hussein

c) Shehan Karunatilaka

d) Ru Freeman

Answer: (a) Nayomi Munaweera is a Sri Lankan American writer and author of Island of a
Thousand Mirrors, which won Commonwealth Book Prize for the Asian Region in 2013, and
What Lies Between Us (2016), which won the Sri Lankan National Book Award for best
English novel and the Godage Award.