I Am Malala
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50 free I Am Malala trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
I Am Malala is the memoir of a schoolgirl from Pakistan's Swat Valley who spoke up for girls' education, survived an attempt on her life at fifteen and went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize. It is also a family story, a portrait of a father and his school, and a close-up history of a valley taken over by the Taliban. This quiz follows the book from start to finish: childhood and school days in Part One, the Radio Mullah broadcasts and the closing of the girls' schools in Part Two (chapters 9 to 15), the build-up to the attack in Part Three, and the hospital chapters that end the story. A few questions cover what came after, from the young readers edition to the prizes. It suits students revising a class set text, book clubs, teachers who want a quick check on chapters 9 to 12 or on Part Three, and anyone who has just turned the last page. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The title I Am Malala answers a question shouted aboard a school bus in October 2012 by whom?
A young gunman
A young gunman stopped the bus, asked for Malala by name and fired three shots. Her answer to the world, a year later, became the title of her memoir.
Q 02What does the Pashto name Malala mean, a legacy of the folk heroine Malalai who died in battle?
Grief-stricken
Grief-stricken is what Malala means in Pashto. Her namesake, Malalai of Maiwand, is said to have raised the flag when its bearer fell in an 1880 battle in Afghanistan.
Q 03Which award did the audiobook of I Am Malala, narrated by Neela Vaswani, win in 2015?
A Grammy
A Grammy for Best Children's Album went to the recording in 2015. The winner was the young readers edition of the memoir, not the original adult book.
Q 04Which career did young Malala dream of before her father encouraged her to go into politics instead?
Doctor
Doctor was the ambition she named in early interviews. In the summer of 2009, while her family was displaced by fighting in Swat, she resolved to become a politician instead.
Q 05To which young writer did former US first lady Laura Bush compare Malala in a 2012 newspaper article?
Anne Frank
Anne Frank was already familiar to Malala: the BBC correspondent who asked her to keep a diary of life under the Taliban had told her about the girl's wartime journal.
Q 06Which pop star dedicated a song to Malala on stage in Los Angeles on the very day of the 2012 shooting?
Madonna
Madonna dedicated her song Human Nature to Malala that night. She performed with a temporary tattoo of the name Malala on her back.
Q 07Which Hollywood actress made the first donation to the Malala Fund, giving $200,000 for girls' schooling in Swat?
Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie gave the money in 2013. She had earlier written an article about how she explained the shooting to her own children.
Q 08Whose shawl did Malala wear to address the United Nations in 2013, honouring a murdered role model?
Benazir Bhutto
Benazir Bhutto, twice prime minister of Pakistan, was assassinated in Rawalpindi in December 2007. Malala, then ten, writes that if Benazir could die, no one was safe.
Q 09In which English city did Malala wake from a coma a week after the shooting, and later settle with her family?
Birmingham
Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth Hospital houses the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, which treats military personnel injured in conflict zones.
Q 10Which Sunday Times foreign correspondent co-wrote the memoir I Am Malala with Malala Yousafzai?
Christina Lamb
Christina Lamb began reporting on Pakistan and Afghanistan in the late 1980s. The book they wrote together was named Popular Non-Fiction Book of the Year at Britain's National Book Awards in 2013.
Q 11What is the name of Malala's mother, who was learning to read at the time of the 2012 shooting?
Toor Pekai
Toor Pekai sold her schoolbooks for sweets as a small girl and stayed at home. She regretted it only after meeting Malala's father, a highly educated man.
Q 12After which 17th-century Pashtun warrior-poet did Malala's father name the school he founded in Swat?
Khushal Khattak
Khushal Khattak spent his last years urging the Pashtun tribes to unite against the Mughal Empire. He is regarded as the father of Pashto literature.
Q 13Which difficulty did Malala's father Ziauddin overcome as a boy to win a public speaking competition?
A stutter
Q 21Which health campaign did the Taliban halt in Swat during the Radio Mullah chapters of I Am Malala?
Polio vaccinations
Polio vaccinations stopped as the movement tightened its grip. Its leader also set up a court, the shura, which ordered public whippings for everyday offences.
Q 22In Part Two of I Am Malala, the Taliban dynamite a giant ancient rock carving of which figure in Swat?
The Buddha
The Buddha at Jehanabad was damaged about the head by explosives in 2007. Italian archaeologists finished restoring it in 2016.
Q 23Which Islamabad landmark, held by armed militants and stormed by troops in 2007, features in Part Two of I Am Malala?
The Red Mosque
A stutter troubled Ziauddin from childhood, yet he took first prize with a speech that his own father, a celebrated orator, had written for him.
Q 14Which bird gave Malala's father his nickname Shaheen, a name his own father bestowed after a contest win?
Falcon
Falcon is the meaning of shaheen, chosen because the bird flies above all others. His father, Rohul Amin, was a theology teacher and the local imam.
Q 15Which classmate, Malala's best friend, beat her into second place in a school public speaking contest?
Moniba
Moniba won that contest, whose set topic was honesty. Malala had entered it to make her parents proud again after she was caught taking a neighbour's belongings.
Q 16In which city, the largest in Pakistan's Swat Valley, was Malala Yousafzai born in 1997 and raised?
Mingora
Mingora is where her father ran his school. Malala was born at home, with neighbours helping, because the family could not afford a hospital birth.
Q 17In Part One of I Am Malala, who campaigns to shut her father's school because it teaches girls?
An Islamic scholar
An Islamic scholar, or mufti, told the building's owner the school was shameful and later brought a delegation of influential men. His campaign failed.
Q 18Where did Malala see the working children she begged her father to admit free to his school in Swat?
At a rubbish heap
At a rubbish heap she saw children who lived and worked there. Her father was already giving away places at his school so that poor children could learn.
Q 19Which general, who seized power in a 1999 coup, rules Pakistan through Malala's childhood in I Am Malala?
Pervez Musharraf
Pervez Musharraf was the country's fourth military ruler, the memoir notes. After 9/11 he became an American ally, and in 2007 he sent troops into Swat against the Taliban.
Q 20Which Taliban leader in Swat, whose sermons open Part Two of I Am Malala, was nicknamed Radio Mullah?
Maulana Fazlullah
Maulana Fazlullah preached over an illegal FM station, telling listeners to give up their televisions, DVDs and CDs. He was killed in Afghanistan in 2018.
The Red Mosque, or Lal Masjid, had been in conflict with the authorities for 18 months before the siege of July 2007. Afterwards, the memoir says, the militants declared war on the government.
Q 24What was the profession of Shabana, whose killing in a Swat square heralded Taliban rule in I Am Malala?
Dancer
Dancer Shabana was well known in Pakistan. Bodies were later displayed each morning at the same crossroads, officially Green Square, which earned the name Bloody Square.
Q 25What title does I Am Malala give Part Two, the section covering the rise of the Taliban in Swat?
The Valley of Death
The Valley of Death opens with the Taliban arriving when Malala was ten. It closes in May 2009 with her family joining the exodus as the military moved in.
Q 26Under which pen name, borrowed from a Pashtun folk heroine, did Malala write her anonymous 2009 diary?
Gul Makai
Gul Makai means cornflower in Pashto. The BBC editors insisted on a pseudonym because they feared for the 11-year-old's safety.
Q 27In which language did the BBC first publish the anonymous diary that 11-year-old Malala kept in early 2009?
Urdu
Urdu was one of three languages Malala spoke fluently, with Pashto and English. Her first entry went up on the BBC Urdu website on 3 January 2009.
Q 28Which American newspaper sent Adam Ellick to film a 2009 documentary about Malala and her school in Swat?
The New York Times
The New York Times film brought Malala wider notice. A Stanford student who saw it, Shiza Shahid, sought out the family and later co-founded the Malala Fund.
Q 29How did Malala return to class in 2009 when the Taliban reopened school only for girls up to Year 4?
Pretended to be younger
She pretended to be younger than she was, because Malala was in Year 5. The ban was eased after pressure that included a BBC correspondent's appeal to the Taliban leader.
Q 30To which mountain district, her father's birthplace, did Malala's family flee when fighting emptied Swat in 2009?
Shangla
Shangla was home to the family's village, where Malala joined her cousins at the small local school. Her twelfth birthday passed unremarked during the months away.