Q 01/05

Who wrote the 1982 novel The Color Purple?

A) Maya Angelou

B) Zora Neale Hurston

C) Alice Walker

D) Toni Morrison

Answer · why

C) Alice Walker

She had already published two novels, The Third Life of Grange Copeland and Meridian, before her best-known book.

Q 02/05

In what year was the novel first published?

A) 1993

B) 1985

C) 1989

D) 1982

Answer · why

D) 1982

The film arrived just three years later, and the Broadway musical more than two decades after that.

Q 03/05

Which honour did the novel win in 1983, making its author the first Black woman to win it for fiction?

A) Booker Prize

B) Pulitzer Prize

C) Nobel Prize in Literature

D) Newbery Medal

Answer · why

B) Pulitzer Prize

Gwendolyn Brooks had won the same institution's poetry prize back in 1950.

Q 04/05

Besides the Pulitzer, which other major US literary honour did the novel win in 1983?

A) National Book Award

B) PEN/Faulkner Award

C) Edgar Award

D) Hugo Award

Answer · why

A) National Book Award

In 2019 the BBC also placed it on its list of the 100 most influential novels.

Q 05/05

The novel is written in which literary form?

A) Picaresque

B) Epistolary

C) Stream of consciousness

D) Frame narrative

Answer · why

B) Epistolary

Celie's early letters are addressed to God because she has no one else safe to tell about her stepfather's abuse.