Q 01/05

Which novel begins with the line "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"?

A) Great Expectations

B) A Tale of Two Cities

C) Oliver Twist

D) David Copperfield

Answer · why

B) A Tale of Two Cities

Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities (1859) opens with one of the most famous first lines in English literature, contrasting the era of the French R...

Q 02/05

In One Hundred Years of Solitude, what is the name of the fictional town founded by the Buendía family?

A) Comala

B) Macondo

C) Aracataca

D) Santa María

Answer · why

B) Macondo

Macondo, founded by patriarch José Arcadio Buendía, is modelled on Aracataca, the Colombian town where the author was born. Comala is Juan Rulfo's gho...

Q 03/05

Odysseus takes ten years to sail home from the Trojan War to which island?

A) Crete

B) Ithaca

C) Sicily

D) Cyprus

Answer · why

B) Ithaca

Odysseus reaches Ithaca alone, since all of his crewmates are killed on the way, and he has been gone twenty years.

Q 04/05

What pen name did Mary Ann Evans use to publish her novels?

A) Mark Twain

B) Isak Dinesen

C) George Sand

D) George Eliot

Answer · why

D) George Eliot

Mary Ann Evans adopted the male pen name George Eliot to ensure her works were taken seriously. She wrote Middlemarch, Silas Marner, and The Mill on t...

Q 05/05

Which Shakespeare play features the characters Prospero and Ariel?

A) A Midsummer Night's Dream

B) The Winter's Tale

C) The Tempest

D) Twelfth Night

Answer · why

C) The Tempest

The Tempest is widely thought to draw on the Sea Venture, an English ship wrecked on Bermuda in 1609 on its way to Jamestown.