1.

Girish Karnad’s Hayavadana, originally in Kannada, has been translated into English by
??

A). U.R. Ananthamurthy

B). By the playwright himself

C). G.S. Amur

D). A.K. Ramanujan

Ans (B) Hayavadana is a play by Girish Karnad. The play tells the story of two friends who
are in love with the same woman and who accidentally swap heads. A comedy ending in
tragedy, the narrative also tells the story of a man with a horse’s head who seeks to become
human.

2. Thomas Babington Macaulay, the writer of the infamous Minutes of 1835, finds a
mention in Salman Rushdie’s ?

A). Midnights' Children

B). Shame

C). The Moor’s Last Sigh

D). Fury

Ans (C.) “The Moor’s Last Sigh” is a picaresque recounting of the rise, decline and plunge to
extinction of a Portuguese merchant family anciently established in southern India,
focusing on the period from 1900 to the present.

3. “Every demon carries within him unknown to himself, a tiny seed of self-destruction and
goes up in thin air at the most unexpected moment.” To which of R.K. Narayan’s characters
the above statement applies ?

A). Raju - The Guide.

B). Jagan – The Sweet Vendor

C). Vasu – Man Eater of Malgudi

D). Margayya – The Financial Expert

Ans (C.) Vasu has been called the Man-Eater of Malgudi who tries to suppress the innocent
lives of Malgudi. The author has used the mythological term ,’Bhasmasura’ to explain the
demonic attributes of Vasu. He kills innocent animals, seduces women, threatens people
of Malgudi and seeks pleasure out of it.

4. Which of the following statements is not true of Mahesh Dattani’s Final Solutions?

A). The play centres around a middle class Hindu family during a

Communal riot.

B). It it concerned with homosexual relationships.

C). It challenges communalism.

D). It promotes religious pluralism in South Asia.

Ans (B) “Final Solution” is a play by Mahesh Dattani that delves into the complex themes of
identity, religion, and societal divisions in India. Set against the backdrop of communal
tensions, the play follows the lives of characters grappling with their own beliefs and
prejudices.

5. Which of the following poets describes his “mistress” as “No, she is not Anglo-Indian.
She is Indian English, the language that I use.” ??

A). Keki Daruwalla

B). A.K Ramanujan

C). Nissim Ezekiel

D). R. Parthasarathy

Ans (A) Keki N. Daruwalla is an Indian poet and short story writer in English. He is also a
former Indian Police Service officer. He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award, in 1984
for his poetry collection, The Keeper of the Dead.
6. Identify the correctly matched pair:

A). Amitav Ghosh – All About H. Haterr

B). Anita Desai – Inheritance of Loss

C). Shashi Deshpande – A Bend in the Ganges

D). Salman Rushdie – The Enchantress of Florence

Ans (D) The central theme of The Enchantress of Florence is the visit of a European to the
Mughal emperor Akbar’s court and his claim that he is a long lost relative of Akbar, born of
an exiled Indian princess and an Italian from Florence.

7. In his poem “A Morning Walk” Nissim Ezekiel talks about a ‘Barbaric City sick with
slums/Deprived of seasons, blessed with rains/Its hawkers, beggars, iron-
lunged/Processions led by frantic drums. Identify the city ?

A). Calcutta

B). Banares

C). Bombay

D). Agra

Ans (C.) In this poem the speaker is comparing this Bombay city to Dante’s inferno.

8. “Love Poem for a Wife I”. “Breaded Fish”, “Still Life” and “Snakes” are all poems by ?

A). A.K. Ramanujan

B). Jayant Mahapatra

C). R.Parthasarthy

D). Keki Daruwalla

Ans (A) A.K Ramanujan was an Indian poet and scholar of Indian literature and linguistics.
Ramanujan was also a professor of Linguistics at University of Chicago. Ramanujan was a
poet, scholar, linguist, philologist, folklorist, translator, and playwright.

9. A Bride for the Sahib (1967) is a work by ??

A). Ved Mehta

B). Sudhin Ghose

C). Khushwant Singh

D). K.M. Munshi

Ans (C.) Khushwant Singh is bound to go down in Indian literary history as one of the
premium historians novelists, an up-front political commentator an exceptional observer
social critic. He was founder-editor of Yojana, The National Herald and Hindustan Times.

10. The poems titled “Cord-Cutting”, “Post-‘Mortem Report”, “The Difference in the
Morgue” and “Old Man’s Death” are by ?

A). Adil”Jussawalla

B). Keki Daruwalla

C). Nissim Ezekiel

D). Gieve Patel

Ans (D) The enduring concerns in Patel’s poetry are the besieged terrain of the human body,
its frailty, absurdity and perishability and the vulgar social inequalities of caste and class
that continue to assail post-Independence India.

11. Ved Mehta wrote a series of essays based on interviews with contemporary
philosophers and historians. What was the work called ?

A). Face to Face

B). Walking the Indian Streets

C). Fly and the Fly Bottle

D). The New Theologian

Ans (C.) Fly and the Fly Bottle is perhaps Ved Mehta’s masterpiece: a collection of his
brilliantly revealing conversations with some of the twentieth century’s most important
philosophers

12. Karma’ Cola (1980) was written by ??

A). Nirad Chaudhuri

B). Gita Mehta

C). Kamala Das

D). Chaman Nahal

Ans (B) Gita Mehta’s Karma Cola is a collection of anecdotes about the Western travelers
that Mehta met in India in the 1970s. A westward-looking Indian, Mehta views young
spiritual seekers with a combination of amusement and dismay. She highlights the
absurdity that people looking for enlightenment and truth are falling for the rhetoric of
gurus teaching such blatantly irrational doctrines.

13. Which of the following prose works is not by Nirad Chaudhuri ?

A). The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian

B). The Continent of Circle

C). An Era of Darkness

D). The Indian Intellectual

Ans (C.) “An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India” reveals the horrors and atrocities
committed by the British invaders, and how they managed to crush India from from within.

14. Which foreign author introduced the 1980 edition of All About H. Hatter?

A). William Golding

B). Anthony Burgess

C). Graham Green

D.) T.S Eliot

Ans (A) Desani intermittently continued revising the book into the 1980s, when it appeared
with a new introduction by novelist Anthony Burgess, who remarked that “It is not pure
English; it is, like the English of Shakespeare, Joyce and Kipling, gloriously impure.”

15. Who wrote the novel Esmond in India ?

A). Kamala Markandaya

B). Nayantara Sahgal

C). Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

D). Gita Mehta

Ans (C.) Esmond in India is a novel of maneuver and misunderstanding. At its center is the
traditional adulterous triangle of a man, Esmond Stillwood, and two women, his wife,
Gulab, and the younger Shakuntala, with whom, late in the novel, he begins an affair.

16. Which novel of Bhattacharya has been described as “a modern fable of India at the
time of independence”?

A). So Many Hungers

B). Music for Mohini

C). He Who Rides a Tiger

D). A Goddess Named Gold

Ans (D) The plot centres around a touchstone given to Meera by her sagacious grandfather.
It is believed that the amulet would enable Meera to turn copper into gold, provided she
acts kindly as a natural and spontaneous expression of herself.

17. I wanted to publish the book with about 300 blank pages at the end, to show that the
real book is five hundred and odd pages and the reader must fill in the blanks. About which
of his novels did Raja Rao say so ?

A). Kanthapura

B). The Serpent and the Rope

C). The Cat and Shakespeare

D). The Cow of the Barricades

Ans (C.) The Cat and Shakespeare is a gentle, almost teasing fable of two friends –
Govindan Nair, an astute, down-to-earth philosopher and clerk, who tackles the problems
of routine living with extraordinary common sense and gusto, and whose refreshing and
unorthodox conclusions continually panic Ramakrishna Pai, Nair’s friend, neighbour and
narrator of the story.

18. Who is the narrator of Anand’s autobiographical novel Seven Summers ?

A). Krishan

B). Ram

C). Munna

D). Narayan

Ans (A) Seven summers covers his early years from his first memories until the age of nine
which coincides with the start of the first world war in 1914. Fortunately it is not written in
the language of a preteen boy, but Anand stretches his memories to encompass his
childish thoughts along with his more mature considerations.

19. Who wrote Gokhale: My Political Guru (1955)?

A). M.K. Gandhi

B). Lala Hardyal

C). J.L. Nehru

D). Lala Lajpat Rai

Ans (A) This book is a collection of writings by Gandhi about his various interactions with
Gokhale and the impression they made in shaping him politically.

20. “O mystic lotus, sacred and sublime, In myriad-petalled grace inviolate” These lines are
by ?

A). Rabindranath Tagore

B). Sarojini Naidu

C). Jayanta Mahapatra

D). Kamala Das

Ans (B) “The Lotus” by Sarojini Naidu is a poignant poem that uses the lotus flower as a
symbol to convey themes of purity, resilience, and spiritual growth. The poem compares
the lotus, which emerges from murky waters to bloom in pristine beauty and love, to the
human soul’s journey towards enlightenment.

21. Anandmath (1882) was by ?

A). Sri Aurobindo

B). Rabindranath Tagore

C). Bankim Chandra

D). Mulk Raj Anand

Ans (C.) Anandmath is a Bengali historical novel, written by Bankim Chandra

Chattopadhyay and published in 1882. It is inspired by and set in the background of
the Sannyasi Rebellion in the late 18th century. Vande Mataram, “Hail to the Motherland “,
first song to represent India – as the Motherland was published in this novel.

22. Which of the following novels does not record the partition horrors ?

A). Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan

B). Balachandra Rajan’s The Dark Dancer

C). Manohar Malgaonkar’s A Bend in the Ganges

D). None of the above

Ans (D)

23. Choker Bali (1902) was written by ??

A). Bankim Chandra

B). Sarat Chandra

C). Rabindranath Tagore

D). Sri Aurobindo

Ans (C.) It explores the extramarital affair between Binodini, a young widow, and Mahendra,
an old suitor of hers, the complicated friendship with Asha, Mahendra’s wife, and her
mutually conflicting feelings with Behari, Mahendra’s childhood best friend.

24. Which play is not by Asif Currimbhoy?

A). The Clock

B). The Dumb Dancer

C). Tiger-Claw

D). The Doldrummers

Ans (C.) The Tiger Claw by Shauna Singh is a fascinating story of moral complexity, inner
conflict and exile, a magnificent portrait of a very courageous woman, Noor Inayat Khan,
the legendary French Resistance fighter, whose divided conscience is reflected in the
drama of Nazi-occupied France and British-occupied India.

25. Which work of Vikram Seth is a tale of Californian life in verse ?

A). The Golden Gate

B). From Heaven Lake

C). The Humble Administrator’s Garden

D). Mappings

Ans (A) Renowned novelist and poet Vikram Seth published his first novel, The Golden
Gate, in 1986. Taking inspiration from Alexander Pushkin’s classic 19thcentury Russian
saga in verse, Eugene Onegin, Seth transposed the characters and action of that work onto
a modern California setting.

26. Which novel is written by Manju Kapoor ?

A). The Blue Bedspread

B). Difficult Daughters

C). The Inscrutable Americans

D). Sisters
Ans (B) Difficult Daughters tells the story of Virmati, a young woman who falls in love with a
married professor just as her family is planning her own marriage. It vividly describes India
around the time of partition, but more importantly gives more depth to a story which
sounded familiar.

27. Who wrote The Life Divine ?

A). Rabindranath Tagore

B). Jawahar Lal Nehru

C). Sri Aurobindo

D). Mahatma Gandhi

Ans (C.) The Life Divine is Sri Aurobindo’s principal work of philosophy. In this book, Sri
Aurobindo presents a theory of spiritual evolution and suggests that the present crisis of
humanity will lead to a spiritual transformation of the human being and the advent of a
divine life upon earth.

28. R’ in R.K. Narayan’s name stands for the name of the Village to Which his family
belonged. What is it ?

A). Rampuram

B). Rasipuram

C). Rasikapuram

D). Rainpuram

Ans (B) Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami, better known as R. K. Narayan, was
an Indian writer and novelist known for his work set in the fictional South Indian town of
Malgudi. He was a leading author of early Indian literature in English along with Mulk Raj
Anand and Raja Rao.

29. Storm in Chandigarh and Mistaken Identity are novels by which Indian author?
A). Nayantara Sahgal

B). Bharati Mukherjee

C). Arun Joshi

D). Chaman Nahal

Ans (A) Nayantara Sahgal is an Indian writer who writes in English. She is a member of the
Nehru–Gandhi family, the second of the three daughters born to Jawaharlal Nehru’s sister,
Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit. She was awarded the 1986 Sahitya Akademi Award for her English
novel Rich Like Us.

30. The Dark Dancer novel was written by ?

A). R.K. Narayan

B). Balachandra Rajan

C). Bharati Mukherjee

D). Bhabani Bhattacharya

Ans (B) This novel of modern India centers around national and personal conflicts in its
story of V. S. Krishnan, a Brahmin, who, returned after ten years of schooling in England,
finds that his country’s strife over partition and the English evacuation is reflected in his
own struggle to find a meaning and a definition of his life.

31. In which novel of Desai most of the action takes place on Manori Island?

A). Bye-Bye, Blackbird

B). Voices in the City

C). Where Shall We Go This Summer?

D). Fire on the Mountain

And (C.) Where Shall We Go This Summer is an intense story of a sensitive young wife torn
between the desire to abandon the boredom and hypocrisy of her middle class and
ostensibly comfortable existance, and the realisation that the bonds that tie her to it
cannot easily be broken.

32. To Live or Not to Live (1970) was written by ??

A). Nirad Chaudhuri

B). Khushwant Singh

C). Ved Mehta

D). Jayaprakash Narayan

Ans (A) In this book Choudhury shuns his customary disparagement and tranquilly
investigates the opportunity of achieving contentment in social and family life under the
conditions to which people are born in this country.

33. Who wrote the poem The Dance of the Eunuchs ?

A). Kamala Das

B). Nissim Ezekiel

C). A.K. Ramanujan

D). Jayanta Mahapatra

Ans (A) This poem explains about the human being who is very powerful in every aspect.
Strider is a small water insect which is a New England name for it. Insect may be small but
he explains it from different angle.

34. Which of the following novels of Mulk Raj Anand is not included in The Lal Singh Trilogy
?

A). Across the Black Waters

B). The Village

C). Two Leaves and a Bud

D). The Sword and the Sickle

Ans (C.) Two Leaves and a Bud is a novel by Mulk Raj Anand first published in 1937. Like his
other novels, this one also deals with the topic of oppression of the poor, and is about a
peasant who tries to protect his daughter from a British soldier. The story is based in the tea
plantations of Assam.

35. Who claimed that The reading of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, during a short term in jail,
awakened me to the possibilities of the epic novel. ?

A). Jawahar Lal Nehru

B). Mulk Raj Anand

C). Rabindranath Tagore

D). Manohar Malgaonkar

Ans (B) He said, “War and Peace is in quite a different category from the chronicles and
epics of the past, however great they may be, for it is cast in the peculiarly modern form of a
novel, a form with inherent laws of its own, a form which is a considerable advance on the
narratives of older times.”

36. Match the characters and the novels in which they appear :

Lalitha and Saroja 1. The Nowhere Man

Srinivas and Laxman 2. A Handful of Rice

Ravi and Nalini 3. The Two Virgins

Rukmani and Nathan 4. Nectar in a Sieve

A). (a-3, b-1, c-2, d-4)

B). (a-2, b-1, c-2, d-4)

C). (a-1, b-1, c-2, d-4)

D). (a-4, b-1, c-2, d-4)

Ans (A)

37. Who created the heroes namely Sindi Oberoi, Billy, Ratan, Som Bhaskar ?

A). Anurag Mathur

B). Manohar Malgaonkar

C). Bhabani Bhattacharya

D). Arun Joshi

Ans (D) Arun Joshi was an Indian writer. He is known for his novels The Strange Case of Billy
Biswas and The Apprentice. He won the Sahitya Akademi Award for his novel The Last
Labyrinth in 1982. His novels have characters who are urban, English speaking and
disturbed for some reason.

38. Which of the following is not a novel about coloured immigrants in UK ?

A). Anita Desai’s Bye-Bye, Blackbird

B). Kamal Markandaya’s The Nowhere Man

C). Reginald Massey’s The Immigrants

D). Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s To Whom She Will

Ans (D) Ruth has given us a beguiling tale of a young girl named Amrita and her deliciously
forbidden love affair with Hari, a boy of dubious background. While both families cook up
their own plans for their children’s futures, the two lovers, busy with their separate
illusions, realize only at the last moment that life has led them all to a new and very
different beginning.
39. The Year of the Vulture (1972) which covers the Bangla tragedy was written by ?

A). Kuldip Nayar

B). Amita Malik

C). Jayaprakash Narayan

D). D.P Singhal

Ans (B) The Year of the Vulture” by Amita Malik is a book that delves into the political
landscape of India during a turbulent period. It covers various events and power struggles,
providing insights into the workings of the government, media, and society.

40. Which Ezekiel play is built on the theme “Give us this day our daily American !”?

A). Nalini

B). Marriage Poem

C). The Sleepwalkers

D). Song of Deprivation

Ans (C.) The Sleepwalkers: An Indo-American Farce is a one-act farce satirizing the kind of
Indians and the Americans which visit India. The Play also explores the Indian’s excessive
fascination with American culture.

41. Which of these plays deals with Lord Dalhousie’s regime of expansion culminating in
1857 ?

A). Dina Mehta’s The Myth Makers

B). Malgaonkar’s Line of Mars

C). Murlidas Melwani’s Deep Roots

D). K.S.Duggal’s To Each a Window

Ans (B) Line of Mars is a period play. As such, its dramatis personae are stereotypes of the
period and not the individuals. The play is based on the atrocious Doctrine of Lapse of Lord
Dalhousie.

42. Eastern Religion and Western Thought (1939) was written by

A). J.L. Nehru

B). M.K. Gandhi

C). Lala Hardyal

D). Prof. Radhakrishnan

Ans (D) This challenging and beautifully written book describes the leading ideas of Indian
philosophy and religion. It traces the probable influence of Indian mysticism on Greek
thought and Christian development, through Alexandrian Judaism, Christian Gnosticism,
and Neo-Platonism.

43. Who wrote the Booker Prize-winning novel “The Remains of the Day,” exploring themes
of memory and dignity?

A) Zadie Smith

B) Kazuo Ishiguro

C) Hanif Kureishi

D) Andrea Levy

Answer: B) The novel describes Stevens’ road trip through the English countryside to visit a
former colleague. The trip prompts him to reflect on his past professional and private life,
when the nobleman he served got caught up in the political turmoil before World War II.

44. Caryl Phillips’ novel “Crossing the River” examines the historical legacies of slavery and
colonization through interconnected stories spanning multiple continents. Which of the
following is NOT one of the locations featured in the novel?
A) England

B) Africa

C) Caribbean

D) Australia

Answer: D) The novel by Caryl is about the great obstacles Africans overcame during their
lives after being forcefully displaced from the life they knew and planned for.

45. Which novel by Timothy Mo portrays the experiences of a Filipino immigrant in England
and explores themes of identity and belonging?

A) "The Monkey King"

B) “The Redundancy of Courage”

C) “Sour Sweet”

D) “An Insular Possession”

Answer: A) Mo’s first novel, The Monkey King (1978), is set in Hong Kong. Comic and ironic,
it tells the story of Wallace Nolasco, a naïve young Portuguese-Chinese in Hong Kong, who
manages not only to gain control of his father-in-law’s business but eventually to head the
family.

46. Jhumpa Lahiri won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her debut collection of short stories
titled:

A) “Interpreter of Maladies”

B) “The Namesake”

C) “Unaccustomed Earth”

D) “The Lowland”
Answer: A) Interpreter of Maladies focuses on the culture clash between local Indian
resident Mr. Kapasi and the Das family from America who are visiting India. Major themes
are fantasy and reality, responsibility and accountability, and cultural identity.

47. Which of Arundhati Roy’s novels is set against the backdrop of the Naxalite movement
in India?

A) "The God of Small Things”

B) “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness”

C) “The White Tiger”

D) “An Atlas of Impossible Longing”

Answer: B) In the novel, Roy addresses social inequalities, political corruption, and a great
deal of violence through the points of view of various characters. However, she also
highlights the history of hope and resistance in India, and the characters’ resilience in the
face of contemporary political oppression.

48. What is the title of V.S. Naipaul’s controversial travelogue that explores various Islamic
countries?

A) “In a Free State”

B) “Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples”

C) “The Enigma of Arrival”

D) “The Mimic Men”

Answer: B) Beyond Belief is the result of his five-month journey in 1995 through lands
where descendants of Muslim converts live at odds with indigenous traditions.

49. Which of the following novels acted as an influence on Salman Rushdie in forging a new
narrative style in English?

A). Raja Rao's Kanthapura

B). G.V. Desani’s All About H Hatterr

C). Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable

D). R.K. Narayan’s The Sweet Vendor

And (B) All About H. Hatterr is a novel by G. V. Desani chronicling the adventures of an
Anglo-Malay man in search of wisdom and enlightenment.

50. Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel “The Namesake” follows the life of a young man named Gogol
Ganguli, whose name is inspired by which famous Russian author?

A) Fyodor Dostoevsky

B) Leo Tolstoy

C) Anton Chekhov

D) Nikolai Gogol

Answer: D) The Namesake is the story of a Bengali immigrant family living in the U.S. They
name their firstborn Gogol, in a haste, after his father’s favourite author. Living in an Indian
family in America; Gogol finds it difficult to be a part of, both, the Indian tradition and the
American life.