A Number of Books Trivia Quiz

Alexander McCall Smith wrote 'The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency' in 1998 and it was so successful that it spawned a series which is still ongoing in 2025. The story is about Precious Ramotswe, who creates her detective agency when she inherits some money. She moves to Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, her country of birth, and works on the basis that learning about the person who needs help is the key to solving their crimes. Along the way, the reader also learns much more about the characters than in most detective or mystery novels.

Alexander McCall Smith is Scottish by heritage but was born in Africa in the country now known as Zimbabwe, and returned to the continent after studying law in Edinburgh. He taught law at the University of Botswana so knew the country where he set his novels. McCall Smith returned to the UK and settled in Edinburgh.

This autobiographical novel is called 'Seven Years in Tibet' and was published in German in 1952 with an English language version the following year. Austrian born Harrer was an SS sergeant in the German army and was captured by the British army. He and a colleague escaped from the prisoner of war camp in India and trekked to Tibet. Harrer was an experienced mountaineer, which helped. The pair stayed in Tibet from 1944 until 1951, leaving when China began its efforts to take control of Tibet.

Although there has been criticism of Harrer, a Nazi at the time, the 14th Dalai Lama has expressed his gratitude to Harrer for bringing Tibet to the world's attention with his book. The story was filmed for the big screen in 1997 under the same title.

This refers to Solomon Northup's autobiographical story 'Twelve Years a Slave', which became much better known when it was turned into a very successful film in 2013. Northup was a black American and was born a free man in the northern region of the USA. He was offered a job in Washington D.C. where he was drugged, kidnapped and transported to the Deep South, where slavery was accepted as normal. Solomon was sold as a slave, and was mistreated. He eventually confided his story to a white man, who risked his own reputation and life to verify Northup's story and eventually obtain his release.

The story was originally published in 1853 and the major facts are backed up by court records. The book fell from public attention for many years, but was rediscovered in the 1960s. An earlier film, shown only on television, appeared in 1984.

'Twenty Years After' dates from 1845 and was written as a sequel to 'The Three Musketeers', published the previous year. The novel has d'Artagnan as its focus and we find he is still a lieutenant despite being a musketeer for twenty years. Following the escape of a prisoner, he is tasked with finding his three former colleagues, with whom he has lost touch. Having tracked them down, the four have another adventure before parting ways again.

Alexandre Dumas was a prolific author of adventure stories, which include 'The Black Tulip' (1850) and 'The Count of Monte Cristo' (1846). He also returned to the four musketeers in 'The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later', a very long book, which was published as a serial over three years beginning in 1847.

John Buchan's book, 'The Thirty-Nine Steps', was originally published in 1915 having previously appeared in instalments. This is how the title is shown in the book, while the film adaptation was called 'The 39 Steps'. The plot is based on the character Richard Hannay, recently returned to London from Rhodesia (as it then was) only to find himself embroiled in an assassination plot. Hannay travels to Scotland only to find himself at risk from both the assassins and the police, who believe he has committed a murder.

Buchan was himself a Scot and an aristocrat, the 1st Baron Tweedsmuir. He was also involved in politics and was the Governor General of Canada from 1935 to 1940. He wrote the novel in the question while ill, and numerous others, as well as non-fiction.

The hint refers to Hanff's memoir '84, Charing Cross Road' which was published in 1970. It is a memoir consisting of the letters she exchanged with the staff of a bookshop at that address in London. Living in New York, Hanff had been unable to locate some of the books she wanted and wrote to the London bookshop to ask for their help. The first letter was in 1949, and a friendship developed between her and the workers at the shop, primarily the chief buyer, Frank Doel. The letters weren't confined to literature and ending up covering numerous topics.

Hanff and Doel never met, as he died in 1968. She did make it to London in 1971 but the shop had already closed. The site is now marked with a plaque and Hanff's address in New York has been renamed 'Charing Cross House'.

The hint should have led you to 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' a novel of 1967 by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a Colombian author. The story follows the lives of seven generations of one family in a fictional small settlement, called Macondo, which begins life detached from the real world. As time goes by, the idyll gradually ends with the unwelcome intrusion of the real world.

Marquez used a 'magic realism' style when writing the novel, including events which are unrealistic yet totally believable in the context of the tale he was spinning. This novel was far from the only success for the author who also wrote 'Love in the Time of Cholera' (1985) as well as several novellas and short stories.

Khaled Hosseini was born in Afghanistan but was only fifteen when his father applied for asylum in the USA. His first three novels all used his country of birth as part of the plot, including the one to which the hint pointed - 'A Thousand Splendid Suns', which was published in 2007. The plot involves two girls as they grow up and the hardships of their lives under the Taliban regime.

Hosseini's first novel, 'The Kite Runner', published in 2003, was also set against a similar background, but this one focussed on two boys. Hosseini is a qualified medical doctor and wrote his first novel while still working as a physician.

'1984', originally shown as 'Nineteen Eighty-Four', was published in 1949 and was the final novel by George Orwell. It was the novel which brought us such now commonplace expressions as 'Big Brother' and 'Newspeak'. The story predicts a dystopian future, where the UK is called Airstrip One and is controlled by a totalitarian regime called Oceania. The leader is Big Brother. Winston Smith is the man who tries to rebel but is tortured and starved into submission.

Orwell's real name was Eric Blair and he was born in 1903. He was politically minded with an aversion to both communism and fascism. His other famous novel is 'Animal Farm', from 1945, which is based on communism and its failings.

Clarke wrote the novel '2001: A Space Odyssey' while working with Stanley Kubrick on the film of that name in 1968. The story was partly based on earlier works by Clarke, so the collaboration was beneficial to both, although the novel was published solely in Clarke's name. The plot begins in prehistoric times when a monolith arrives in Africa bearing aliens. The monoliths reappear in the late twentieth century during a space exploration to Jupiter, with the protagonist, David Bowman, being taken inside one of them.

Clarke was born in England in 1917 and took an early interest in space travel. He wrote several short stories on the topic and was a serious and respected scientist. Clarke moved to Sri Lanka (Ceylon at the time) in 1956 to pursue one of his other interests, diving, and died there in 2008.