A-Z of Alliterative Authors Trivia Quiz

Answer: Jet of Blood

'Jet of Blood' is a highly experimental play, in which the majority of the action occurs via extensive surreal stage directions and there is only around four pages of dialogue. Artaud wrote the play in Paris in 1925, perhaps in a single day. Of the incorrect answers, 'Titus Andronicus' is a play by William Shakespeare, 'Waiting for Godot' is by Samuel Beckett and 'Oedipus Rex' is by the Ancient Greek playwright Sophocles.

Answer: Great Britain

Having lived in the United Kingdom for 20 years, Bryson decided to go on a tour around the country before moving back to his native USA. He travelled to all corners of the island, from Cornwall in the far South West, to North East Scotland. In 2003, a BBC Radio 4 poll voted 'Notes from a Small Island' the book that best represented Great Britain.

Answer: 100

Cookson published her first novel, 'Kate Hannigan', in 1950, and went on to write over 100 novels from then until her death in 1998. While some have labelled her books as 'romance', Cookson was not happy with this label and wrote that her books are historical novels, as they are based on scenarios that she encountered during her youth in North East England.

Answer: Plague

'A Journal of the Plague Year' describes the events of the Great Plague that ravaged London in 1665, and is told from a first person perspective. While it is a fictional novel, Defoe attempts to bring reality to the narrative by describing real locations such as specific streets and houses.

The book is often compared to the diary of Samuel Pepys, which, despite having been written at the time of the plague itself, is often thought to hold less information than Defoe's account.

Answer: Newbery Medal

The Newbery Medal is awarded annually "for the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children", and is generally awarded to a single work published in the previous year. Enright won the award in 1939 for 'Thimble Summer', published the year before. The book tells the story of nine-year-old Garnet Linden, and is set in Wisconsin during the Great Depression.

Answer: Parade's End

Ford Madox Ford, not to be confused with the painter Ford Madox Brown, was a towering figure in the English literature scene during the early part of the 20th Century. While he is now best remembered for his novels, he also founded the magazines 'The English Review' and 'The Transatlantic Review', and contributed significantly to literary criticism. 'Parade's End' is set both in England and on the Western Front during World War I, and was heavily influenced by Ford's own experiences.

Answer: Brighton Rock

Despite his dislike of being labelled as a 'Roman Catholic author', many of Greene's novels contain themes and plots that revolve around the church. One such example is 'Brighton Rock', in which Greene contrasts the immoral yet Catholic Pinkie with the moral yet irreligious Ida Arnold.

As well as writing novels, Graham Greene also wrote several screenplays for successful films, notably for Carol Reed's 1949 film noir 'The Third Man'.

Answer: Steppenwolf

Often thought to reflect Hesse's own spiritual crisis during the time in which the book was written, 'Steppenwolf' is a bleak look at bourgeois society, a society in which Harry Haller feels that he does not belong. He imagines himself as a lone 'wolf of the steppes', hence the title of the book.

In addition to 'Steppenwolf', Hermann Hesse is also known for the Buddhist-influenced 'Siddhartha' and his magnum opus 'The Glass Bead Game'.

Answer: Bloomsday

Taking its name from Homer's 'Odyssey' and mirroring several passages therein, 'Ulysses' tells the story of Leopold Bloom throughout the day of 16 June 1904. Parallels can be drawn between Leopold and Odysseus, as well as between his wife Molly and Odysseus' wife Penelope. Joyce's fictional alter-ego, Stephen Dedalus, also appears in 'Ulysses' and can be seen to mirror Odysseus' son Telemachus. Dedalus is the main character in Joyce's semi-autobiographical novel 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'.

Answer: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

'The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test' tells the story of Ken Kesey leading his Merry Pranksters across the United States in a bus called 'Further'. It shows Kesey's use of LSD and other psychedelics, notably when mixed with Kool-Aid and shared around in group 'Acid Tests'. Along the journey, the Merry Pranksters encounter a host of other countercultural groups, including the Hells Angels and the Grateful Dead.

Answer: The Giver

Although it may initially appear that the society depicted in 'The Giver' is a utopia, it soon becomes clear that it is actually extremely dystopian. As a result of eradicating pain via conversion to 'Sameness', 'The Community' have also removed any kind of depth of feeling, something which the main character, Jonas, struggles with throughout the book. 'The Giver' was adapted into a 2014 film of the same name, starring Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep and Brendon Thwaites.

Answer: Georgia

One of the most popular American novels of all time, 'Gone with the Wind' tells the story of a young woman named Scarlett O'Hara as she struggles to survive during the American Civil War. The book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937 and was made into an equally successful film of the same name in 1939.

While she only published a single novel during her lifetime, several other examples of Margaret Mitchell's writing have surfaced over the years, including the romance novella 'Lost Laysen', written when she was only 15 years old.

Answer: Australia

Nerida Newton's first work, 'The Lambing Flats', is a historical novel that depicts the experience of Chinese migrant workers during the violent 1861 riots of the same name. It won her the 'Emerging Author' category at the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards in 2004. Her second novel, 'Death of a Whaler', is set in Byron Bay, New South Wales in the 1960s.

Answer: Valentines

Olaf Olafsson has written three novels, 'The Journey Home', 'Absolution' and 'Walking Into the Night'. 'Valentines' was his first short story collection. Each story provides a vignette of a relationship, often a romantic relationship, between two people.

The collection won the 2006 Icelandic Literary Prize for fiction. In addition to being an author, Olafsson is also a businessman, and was a key player at Sony during the release of the PlayStation console.

Answer: His Dark Materials

While it starts at the fictional Jordan College, Oxford, 'His Dark Materials' is a fantasy series with an epic scope. The two main characters, Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry, travel through a series of parallel universes, encountering witches and armoured polar bears along the way. 'Northern Lights' was published in North America as 'The Golden Compass', a name also used by the 2007 film adaptation starring Dakota Blue Richards and Nicole Kidman.

Answer: German

Rilke's 'Duino Elegies' were so called because he began writing them at Duino Castle on the Gulf of Trieste in 1912. However, despite containing only ten poems, the collection took him more than nine years to complete as he suffered from severe bouts of depression, partly due to his conscription in World War I.

He eventually published the collection in 1923, only three years before his untimely death from leukemia. Contrary to the 'Duino Elegies', Rilke managed to write the first 26 of his 'Sonnets to Orpheus' in a four day period in February 1922.

Answer: Apple

'The Giving Tree' is the story of a long relationship between a boy and a female apple tree. The tree is always willing to give up parts of herself to help the boy at various stages during his life, while he seems happy to take without thinking. The book has proved controversial, with some critics suggesting that the relationship between the two characters is exploitative, rather than a depiction of unconditional love. Silverstein was something of a modern day polymath, winning a Grammy for his 'A Boy Named Sue' and being nominated for an Oscar for his song 'I'm Checkin' Out' from the film 'Postcards from the Edge'.

Answer: Poem

Throughout his career, Tranströmer published 15 volumes of poetry, notable among which are the long poem 'Baltics' and the collection 'The Sorrow Gondola'. Tranströmer suffered a major stroke in 1990, but managed to continue writing despite the fact that the entire right side of his body was paralysed.

His final book of poetry, 'The Great Enigma', contains 45 haikus and five poems in free form and was published in 2004.

Answer: Grass

Walt Whitman was highly influenced by fellow American author Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the genesis of 'Leaves of Grass' came directly from Emerson's call for a 'true American poet' in his 1844 essay 'The Poet'. The initial edition of the collection was relatively short, though once Whitman received Emerson's praise he wanted to expand the work, adding a significant number of poems to the second edition.

He would continue to add to and edit the collection throughout his career. 'Leaves of Grass' contains many of Whitman's most famous poems, including 'Song of Myself', 'I Sing the Body Electric', and 'Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking'.

Answer: China

Xue Xinran was born in China in 1958 and lived there until 1997, when she moved to the United Kingdom. From 1989 to 1997 she ran a popular Chinese radio program called 'Words on the Night Breeze' in which listeners were encouraged to phone in and share their stories, with a focus on women's issues. Xinran collected many of the anecdotes she heard on the program and collected them into a 2002 book entitled 'The Good Women of China', which covers a wide range of issues from homosexuality to infanticide.

She has published many other books including 'Buy Me the Sky', which considers the effect of China's one child policy on the children it produced.