Name The Writer Trivia Quiz

Answer: Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath quite literally wrote the book on the experience of living with depression. A fine poet, she was born to a well-off academic family in Boston in 1932. Her life changed when, at nine, her beloved father died of untreated diabetes and she fell into a depression that she seems to never have broken out of.

She worked as a guest editor for 'Madmoiselle' in her third year at Smith College, but it was here that a string of unrelated events brought on a collapse that ended in her being hospitalised for her mental state, the events of which are described in 'The Bell Jar'.

She was a prolific poet, writing her first poem at age eight, and went on to publish dozens of poems, most of which have been collected and all of which show a profound talent. She married the British poet Ted Hughes in 1956, but the marriage was not happy and in 1963 she committed suicide, bringing a sad conclusion to a brilliant literary career.

Answer: Jeanette Winterson

Jeanette Winterson was born in Manchester and grew up in Accrington where her adoptive, deeply religious (and possibly mentally ill) parents brought her up in a way that might be seen as overly harsh in these days, for instance locking her out of the house overnight for minor disobedience.

Winterson was thrown out of her home at the age of 16 for coming out as a lesbian, but was able to support herself through part-time jobs as she gained an education, eventually reading English at Oxford University. Her life up to this point is recounted in fictional form in her best-known book, 'Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit'.

Answer: The Name of the Rose

"The Name of the Rose" can be read on many levels; as a mystery, as a historical survey of a crucial time in Medieval History, as an examination of faith and power and as a deep dive into the meaning of symbols. It was adapted into a film starring Sean Connery and Christian Slater in 1986.

Eco's main work was as a professor of Semiotics at the University of Bologna, but he found the time to out out a number of bestselling books, "The Name of the Rose" and "Foucault's Pendulum" being the two best known.

Answer: Orhan Pamuk

One of the bestselling Turkish authors, his work has been translated into 63 languages. He has written both fiction and non-fiction, often on very contentious subjects like the Armenian Genocide. In 2005 he was sued by an ultra-nationalist Turkish lawyer over this subject, and although found guilty he received a nominal fine at sentencing.

His work is extremely post-modern in outlook; characters will break the fourth wall and plots are often complicated and digressional. They can, however, be very rewarding reads.

Answer: One Hundred Years of Solitude

Gabriel Garcia Marquez's masterpiece! He was born in 1928 in Aracataca, northern Colombia and like many Latin American writers, he has been linked to a style of literature known as 'magical realism', that is usually characterized by elements of the fantastic woven into the story with a straight sense of presentation. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982 for his body of work.

Answer: Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami is the multi-talented, whisky-drinking, jazz-loving author of 'A Wild Sheep Chase', 'The Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World' and 'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles' amongst many others. His books are a sort of mad mix of thriller, literary novel and Japanese-infused magical realism, delivered in a very accessible style.

The other three options are Japanese authors who have had their work translated into English.

Answer: A Suitable Boy

Vikram Seth was born to well-off Indian parents in 1952 and educated in India and the UK; he now divides his time between the two countries. 'A Suitable Boy' is his longest and best known work, charting the intersection of four different Indian families over a course of two years in post-independence India and highlights social and political change in the new country.

Answer: Milan Kundera

Born in Brno, Czechoslovakia, in 1929, Kundera was initially trained by his musicologist father as a pianist, but later turned to politics when he joined the Czech Communist Party. This opened the doors to an academic and literary career for him after their 1948 takeover of the country, but Kundera soon became at odds with what he saw as Communist repression of individual freedoms and he was expelled and allowed to rejoin several times during his early career as a writer.

Like many Czechoslovak writers, the 1968 Soviet invasion proved a final breaking point between himself and the party although he remained in the country until 1975 when he left for France, becoming a French citizen in 1979 after he was stripped of his Czechoslovakian citizenship.

Answer: Mario Vargas Llosa

Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa has had a full life, with excursions into politics, journalism and as a playwright, but it is as a novelist that he is best known with over twenty books published, most of which have been translated into English.

He has been active in Peruvian politics, standing for President in 1990 with the Centre-Right Movimiento Libertad, but lost to Alberto Fujimori. He now mainly lives in Spain but retains Peruvian nationality.

Answer: Heinrich Boll

Boll was an interesting character, the leader of the 'Rubble Literature' ('Trummerliteratur') movement that saw the first attempts to confront Germany's wartime record. Boll refused to join the Hitler Youth in prewar Germany and was conscripted from his university studies to become an infantryman, serving in Poland, France and the Soviet Union, contracting typhoid and being captured by the US Army in 1945.

Released in 1946, he returned to Koln and worked in an office until he decided to chance becoming a writer in 1949. He has been translated into 14 languages including English.