The quiz conducted by Ranajeet Soman and Avaneendra Bhargav for the BCQC in January 2013.

1.  Questions 1 – 23 (except 16) Ranajeet
 Questions 24, 25 Avaneendra

2. PRELIMS
A man who does not read books has no advantage over an illiterate man.
– Mark Twain
 25 questions. 5 star marked for tie breakers.
 Please mark a star beside the question number to help correcting your answer
sheet.
 If you have read the book in question, you should get the answer easily. If
not, you can still work it out in most cases.
 We are quite lenient while scoring. So part points for the taking.
 Sticks and stones may break your bones
But guesses will never hurt you.
Let us begin.

3.  Gratitude to Suraj Menon and Dr. Aditya Chandorkar for looking
over the quiz and providing opinions and suggestions.

4. Q1.
The three __________ were jewels created by Fëanor
who was the most gifted of the Elves. Within them were
the Light of the Two Trees of Valinor before Melkor the
Morgoth destroyed them. The unsullied Light of Valinor
lives only in the _________. Morgoth seized the jewels
and set them in his crown. Feanor and his sons swore
revenge and took an oath to get the ________ back. This
tale of revenge and the rise and fall of the First Age
makes up the book named after the jewels. Name
jewels/book.

6. The Silmarils
OR
The Silmarillion

7. Q2.
In Roald Dahl‟s „My Uncle Oswald‟, the title character goes on a scheme to collect the
sperm of the men who are legends, or he believes have the potential to be legends, in the
field of science, politics and arts. These involve the following :
Alfonso XIII, King of Spain
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Claude Monet
Igor Stravinsky
Pablo Picasso
Henri Matisse
Marcel Proust
James Joyce
Giacomo Puccini
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Joseph Conrad
H. G. Wells
Rudyard Kipling
George Bernard Shaw
In the primary wishlist, he mentions the names of two Indians he thinks will have their
sperm in great demand in the future. Name them.

9. Mahatma Gandhi and Gurudeb Tagore.

10. Q3.
In his book „The Plague‟, Albert Camus has created a
character M.Cottard who constantly lives in fear of being
arrested. He even tries suicide but fails. The character is
only shown to be happy when things are going terribly all
round in the plague infested city of Oran. He is finally
involved in a shootout with the police and killed as a
result. Which book and author is this a reference/homage
to?

12. Franz Kafka
The Trial

13. Q4.
The Rawalpindi Conspiracy Act set up a special tribunal to
investigate the attempted coup d‟etat on the Liaquat Ali Khan
government. The list of the accused comprised of 15 people. Who is
missing?
Maj. Gen. Akbar Khan
Air Commodore M. K. Janjua
Maj. Gen. Nazir Ahmed
Brigadier Sadiq Khan
Brigadier M. A. Latif Khan
Lt. Col. Zia-ud-Din
Lt. Col. Niaz Muhammad Arbab
Captain Khizar Hayat
Maj. Hassan Khan
Major Ishaq Muhammad
Captain Zafrullah Poshni
Mrs. Naseem Akbar Khan
Syed Sajjad Zaheer
Muhammad Hussain Ata
X?

15. Faiz Ahmed Faiz

16. Q5. Identify these once upon a time friends.

18. Mario Vargas Llosa and Gabriel Garcia Marquez

19. Q6.**
A collection of short stories by this Italian Jewish chemist
is based loosely on his own life experiences of Italy under
the fascist rule. There are 21 stories in all and each story
has the name of an element as the title. (eg: 1st one is
Argon and the last one is Carbon). The Royal Institution of
Great Britain has named it the best science book of all
time. Name the author and the book.

21. Primo Levi
The Periodic Table

22. Q7.
Following is the complete name of which book?
_____________ __ or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty Dance
with Death, by X, a Fourth-Generation German-American Now
Living in Easy Circumstances on Cape Cod [and Smoking Too
Much], Who, as an American Infantry Scout Hors de Combat, as a
Prisoner of War, Witnessed the Fire Bombing of
Dresden, Germany, ‘The Florence of the Elbe,’ a Long Time
Ago, and Survived to Tell the Tale. This Is a Novel Somewhat in the
Telegraphic Schizophrenic Manner of Tales of the Planet
Tralfamadore, Where the Flying Saucers Come From. Peace.

24. Slaughterhouse 5

25. Q8.
If 1984 : Proles
then ?? : Chickenheads/Wormheads

27. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

28. Q9.
An author recently panned Ulysses in an interview
which drew a scathing response by Stuart Kelly of
The Guardian calling the author‟s work as „a
nauseous broth of egomania and snake-oil mysticism
with slightly less intellect, empathy and verbal
dexterity than the week old camembert I threw out
yesterday‟ and claimed that Ulysses can‟t be
summarised into a sentence long quote such as :
„Remember that wherever your heart is, there you
will find treasure‟. Who?

30. Paulo Coelho

31. Q10.

34. Q11.**
This writer was a national level junior tennis player
and this passion was evinced in his most famous
book (with a Shakespearean reference in the title)
which was set in a tennis academy. His article „Roger
Federer as a Religious Experience‟ in the New
Yorker after the 2006 Wimbledon final gained a lot
of popularity. He was in clinical depression for over
20 years and was constantly on medication. He
stopped using medication in 2008 and committed
suicide shortly. Who?

36. David Foster Wallace

37. Q12.
P.L.Deshpande said that one of the toughest tasks he
had ever undertaken was the Marathi translation of
_________. After contemplating for a long time, he
finally wrote a novel almost entirely based on that
book. It was called „Eka Koliyane‟ and was
published in 1965, 13 years after the English novella.
Which novella was his book based on?

39. The Old Man and The Sea

40. Q13**.
„Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas‟ has been dedicated to two
guys named Robert. The dedication goes:
To Bob Geiger,
for reasons that need
not be explained here
- and to Bob _____
for __ _________ ___.
Who is the second Bob and which iconic1965 work of his
has Hunter S. Thompson dedicated the book to?

42. Bob Dylan
Mr.Tambourine Man

43. Q14.
The author lived in this country with her husband where this
guy was the Prime Minister years before she lived there. She
read about him and decided to name a certain
defector/deserter from her book series after this guy. Which
character was named after him.
(image next slide)

46. Salazar Slytherin
The character was named after Antonio
Salazar, the PM of Portugal.

47. Q15.
The John Llewellyn Rhys Prize is awarded to a young
writer under thirty-five from the Commonwealth nations.
The first Indian to win the prize did so for a book titled
„The Room on the Roof‟. Who was this writer?

49. Ruskin Bond

50. The Fourth, 1924
Q16. The Conqueror, 1926
The Outlaw, 1927
The Good, 1928
The Bad, 1930
The Pirate, 1932
The Rebel, 1933
The Gangster, 1934
The Showman, 1937
The Dictator, 1938
The Bold, 1950
The Explorer, 1960
The Superman, 1968
The Lawless, 1970
What name precedes the sobriquets/nicknames?

53. Q17.**
„Good Omens‟ is a novel which is set a few days before
the End Times and the attempts of the angel Aziraphale
and the demon Crowley to avert them. The book has been
co-authored by two authors who are extremely popular in
the fantasy genre. The older of the two did the actual
physical writing and editing. The reason he gave was “ X
wanted to keep working on __________ and I could take
time off from DW to write it out. ” A sequel named „668:
Neighbor of the Beast‟ was planned but as X shifted base
to America it never manifested. Give both authors.

55. Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

56. Q18.
This person introduced himself as
|
He wrote a poem named „Ek November 1984‟ which
was to be his last. He wrote this poem because of a
tragedy that happened around that date. Who is the poet
and what was the poem about?

58. Harivanshrai Bachchan
Indira Gandhi‟s assassination on 31st October
1984

59. Q19.
In Louis de Bernieres‟s „Captain Corelli‟s Mandolin‟ , the
title character hears a few boys of his regiment sing while
in the toilets. The Captain is impressed by their singing and
decides to form a choir. The choir that is formed becomes
popular among the soldiers and Corelli decides to name it
after a prestigious opera house in Milan. What does he
name it?

61. La Scala

62. Q20.**
In Bulgakov‟s „The Master and Margarita‟, there is a
biography within the novel of a certain real-life
Prefect/Procurator written by the Master.
The biography mostly concentrates on the trial of three robbers
and a prisoner surnamed Ha-Notsri who is charged with
sedition which the Prefect has to oversee. As the Passover
festival is in progress, one of the prisoners is to be granted
pardon. The Prefect wants it to be Ha-Notsri (ironically) but
has to pardon the robber Bar-Abba.
The ending line of the biography within the novel as well as
the novel itself end with the Prefect‟s name. Who is this
Prefect and how do we better know the prisoner Ha-Notsri?

64. The Procurator is the Fifth Procurator of Judaea –
Pontius Pilate
Yeshua Ha-Notsri is better known as Jesus the
Nazarene / Jesus of Nazareth

65. Q21.
„Conversations With Mani Ratnam‟ is a recently
launched book by Baradwaj Rangan. Question
being, who wrote the foreword for this book?

67. A.R. Rahman

68. Q22. <play video>

71. Q23.

73. William Hamilton-
Dalrymple wrote
his first book “In
Xanadu” after
retracing the route
taken by Marco
Polo. This letter
was meant for the
uncooperative
Chinese authorities
by his college.

74. Q24.
There is a pit of shame,
And in it lies a wretched man
Eaten by teeth of flame,
In burning winding-sheet he lies,
And his grave has got no name.
And there, till Christ call forth the
dead,
In silence let him lie:
No need to waste the foolish tear,
Or heave the windy sigh:
The man had killed the thing he loved,
And so he had to die.

76. The Ballad Of Reading Gaol
By Oscar Wilde

77. Q25.
How do we better know Mr. Clemens and which TV show ?

79. Mark Twain
Star Trek: The Next Generation