Books and Authors Gk Questions

Correct Answer:-A ( Carl Sagan )
Description:-  Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, science popularizer and science communicator in astronomy and natural sciences. He spent most of his career as a professor of astronomy at Cornell University where he directed the Laboratory for Planetary Studies. He published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books. He advocated scientifically skeptical inquiry and the scientific method, pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Sagan is known for his popular science books and for the award-winning 1980 television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which he narrated and co-wrote.

Correct Answer:-A ( Varahmihir )
Description:-  Varahamihira was an Indian astronomer, mathematician, and astrologer who lived in Ujjain. He is considered to be one of the nine jewels (Navaratnas) of the court of legendary ruler Vikramaditya (thought to be the Gupta emperor Chandragupta II Vikramaditya).Varahamihira’s main work is the book Pañcasiddhantika (or Pancha- Siddhantika, “[Treatise] on the Five [Astronomical] Canons) dated ca. 575 CE gives us information about older Indian texts which are now lost. The work is a treatise on mathematical astronomy and it summarises five earlier astronomical treatises, namely the Surya Siddhanta, Romaka Siddhanta, Paulisa Siddhanta, Vasishtha Siddhanta and Paitamaha Siddhantas.

Correct Answer:-C ( Bhavbhuti )
Description:-  Bhavabhuti was an 8th century scholar of India noted for his plays and poetry, written in Sanskrit. His plays are considered equivalent to the works of Kalidasa. Bhavbhuti was born in a Deshastha Brahmin family of Padmapura, Vidarbha, central India, in Gondia district, on Maharashtra and MP border. His real name was Srikantha Nilakantha, and he was the son of Nilakantha and Jatukarni. He received his education at ‘Padmapawaya’, a place some 42 km South-West of Gwalior. Uttararamacharita (The story of Rama’s later life), depicts Rama’s coronation, the abandonment of Sita, and their reunion

Correct Answer:-B ( Nirad C. Choudhary )
Description:-  Nirad C. Chaudhuri was a Bengali-English writer and cultural commentator. He was born in 1897 in Kishoreganj, which today is part of Bangladesh but at that time was part of Bengal, a region of British India. He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award, in 1975 for his biography on Max Müller called Scholar Extraordinary, by the Sahitya Akademi, India’s national academy of letters. In 1992, he was honoured by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom with the title of Commander of Order of the British Empire (CBE).His 1965 work The Continent of Circe earned him the Duff Cooper Memorial Award, becoming the first and only Indian to be selected for the prize.

Correct Answer:-D ( Arundhati Roy )
Description:-  Arundhati Roy (born 24 November, 1961) is an Indian author and political activist who was best known for the 1998 Man Booker Prize for Fiction winning novel The God of Small Things (1997) and for her involvement in environmental and human rights causes. Roy’s novel became the biggest-selling book by a non-expatriate Indian author. Roy began writing her first novel, The God of Small Things, in 1992, completing it in 1996. The book is semiautobiographical and a major part captures her childhood experiences in Aymanam. The publication of The God of Small Things catapulted Roy to instant international fame. It received the 1997 Booker Prize for Fiction and was listed as one of the New York Times Notable Books of the Year for 1997.It reached fourth position on the New York Times Bestsellers list for Independent Fiction.

Correct Answer:-D ( Khushwant Singh )
Description:-  Khushwant Singh is an Indian novelist and journalist. Singh’s weekly column, “With Malice towards One and All”, carried by several Indian newspapers, is among the most widely-read columns in the country. An Indo- Anglican novelist, Singh is best known for his trenchant secularism, his humor, and an abiding love of poetry. His comparisons of social and behavioral characteristics of Westerners and Indians are laced with acid wit. He served as editor of several literary and news magazines, as well as two broadsheet newspapers, through the 1970s and 1980s. He is a recipient of the Padma Vibhushan the second highest civilian award in India. Khushwant Singh, one of India’s most well-known and widely read authors, commenced writing The Company of Women when he was eightythree and finished at age eighty-five.

Correct Answer:-C ( Bill Gates )
Description:-  Business @ the Speed of Thought is a book written by Bill Gates and Collins Hemingway in 1999. It discusses how business and technology are integrated, and shows how digital infrastructures and information networks can help getting an edge on the competition. Gates asserts cyberspace and industry can no longer be separate entities, and that businesses must change to succeed in the Information Age. Though the book is not a technology handbook it gives interesting insights as to how to integrate business process with technology.

Correct Answer:-C ( Boris Pasternak )
Description:-  On 23 October, 1958, Boris Pasternak was announced as the winner of the Nobel Prize. The citation credited Pasternak’s contribution to Russian lyric poetry and for his role in, “continuing the great Russian epic tradition.” On 25 October, Pasternak sent a telegram to the Swedish Academy: “Infinitely grateful, touched, proud, surprised, overwhelmed.” That same day, the Literary Institute in Moscow demanded that all its students sign a petition denouncing Pasternak and his novel. They were further ordered to join a “spontaneous” demonstration demanding Pasternak’s exile from the Soviet Union. On 26 October, the Literary Gazette ran an article by David Zaslavski entitled, Reactionary Propaganda Uproar over a Literary Weed.

Correct Answer:-B ( R. K. Narayan )
Description:-  R. K. Narayan was an Indian author whose works of fiction include a series of books about people and their interactions in an imagined town in India called Malgudi. He is one of three leading figures of early Indian literature in English, along with Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao. Malgudi is a fictitious town in India created by R.K. Narayan in his novels and short stories. It forms the setting for most of Narayan’s works. Starting with his first novel, Swami and Friends, all but one of his fifteen novels and most of his short stories take place here. Narayan has successfully portrayed Malgudi as a microcosm of India.

Correct Answer:-B ( Arun Shourie )
Description:-  Arun Shourie is an Indian journalist, author and politician. He served as an economist with the World Bank (1968–72 and 1975–77), a consultant to the Planning Commission, India, editor of the Indian Express and Times of India and a minister in the government of India (1998–2004).He was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1982.

Correct Answer:-A ( Yann Martel )
Description:-  Life of Pi is a fantasy adventure novel by Yann Martel published in 2001. The protagonist, Piscine Molitor “Pi” Patel, an Indian boy from Pondicherry, explores issues of spirituality and practicality from an early age. He survives 227 days after a shipwreck while stranded on a boat in the Pacific Ocean with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. The novel was rejected by at least five London publishing houses before being accepted by Knopf Canada, which published it in September 2001. The UK edition won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction the following year. It was also chosen for CBC Radio’s Canada Reads 2003, where it was championed by author Nancy Lee. The French translation, L’histoire de Pi, was chosen in the French version of the contest, Le combat des livres, where it was championed by Louise Forestier.

Correct Answer:-B ( Kapala Kundala )
Description:-  Kapalkundala, is a Bengali romance novel by Indian writer Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay. Published in 1866,it is a story of a forest-dwelling girl named Kapalkundala,who fell in love and got married to Nabakumar, a young gentleman from Saptagram, but eventually found that she is unable to adjust herself with the city life. Fol lowing the success of Chattopadhyay’s first novel Durgeshnandini, he decided to write about a girl who is brought up in a remote forest by a Kapalik (Tantrik sage) and never saw anyone but his foster-father.

Correct Answer:-B ( Arun Shourie )
Description:-  Arun Shourie is an Indian journalist, author and politician. He served as an economist with the World Bank (1968–72 and 1975–77), a consultant to the Planning Commission, India, editor of the Indian Express and Times of India and a minister in the government of India (1998–2004). He was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1982. He is an agnostic. Arun Shourie was born in Jalandhar, India. He was the first child of father Hari Dev Shourie and mother Dayawanti Devasher.

Correct Answer:-D ( Prateeksha )
Description:-  Harivansh Rai Shrivastav alias Bachchan (27 November 1907 – 18 January 2003), was a noted Indian poet of Chhayavaad literary movement (romantic upsurge) of early 20th century Hindi literature. Prateeksha is one of his famous poems which reads like: “Madhur Prateeksha hi jab itnee, Priye tum aate tab kya hota? Maun raat is bhaanti ki jaise, koi geet veena par baj kar. Abhi abhi soi khoi si, sapno mein taaron par sir dhar. Aur dishaaon se prati-dhwaniyaan, Jagrat swaro si aati hain. Kaan tumhaari taan kahin se, yadi sun paate tab kya hota? Tumne kab di baat, raat ke soone mein tum aane waale. Par aise hi waqt praan mann mere ho uth-te matwaale. Saanse ghoom-ghoom phirphir se, asmanjas ke kshan ginti hain. Milne ki ghadiyaan tum nishchit yadi kar jaate tab kya hota?”

Correct Answer:-C ( C. Dasgupta )
Description:-  Based on declassified documents, the book throws new light on the roles played by Mountbatten and the British service chiefs in the Kashmir war of 1947-48 and explains why India took the Kashmir issue to the UN, why it did not carry the war into Pakistan and why it accepted a ceasefire. Examining archival material that has not been looked at previously and attempting an important reassessment of Mountbatten’s role, the book highlights the fact that India’s first Governor-General was not a mere constitutional figurehead. The book shows that he used and abused this authority to ensure that the conflict in Kashmir did not escalate into a full-scale inter-dominion war.

Correct Answer:-C ( Bertrand Russell )
Description:-  Bertrand Arthur William Russell, was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these in any profound sense. He was born in Monmouthshire, into one of the most prominent aristocratic families in Britain.1930.

Correct Answer:-B ( Bill Clinton )
Description:-  My Life is a 2004 autobiography written by former President of the United States Bill Clinton, who left office on January 20, 2001. It was released on June 22, 2004. The book was published by the Knopf Publishing Group; the book sold in excess of 2,250,000 copies. Clinton had received what was at the time the world’s highest book advance fee, believed to have been worth US$12 million; at the announcement of media personality Oprah Winfrey’s future weight loss book, it was said that her undisclosed advance fee had broken this record. In April 2008, the Clintons’ tax records confirmed that the advance for My Life was actually $15 million.

Correct Answer:-C ( Bill Gates )
Description:-  Business @ the Speed of Thought is a book written by Bill Gates and Collins Hemingway in 1999. It discusses how business and technology are integrated, and shows how digital infrastructures and information networks can help getting an edge on the competition. Gates asserts cyberspace and industry can no longer be separate entities, and that businesses must change to succeed in the Information Age.

Correct Answer:-C ( Bhavabhuti )
Description:-  Bhavabhuti was an 8th century scholar of India noted for his plays and poetry, written in Sanskrit. His plays are considered equivalent to the works of Kalidasa. Bhavbhuti was born in a Deshastha Brahmin family of Padmapura, Vidarbha, central India, in Gondia district, on Maharashtra and MP border. His real name was SrikanthaNilakantha, and he was the son of Nilakantha and Jatukarni. He received his education at ‘Padmapawaya’, a place some 42 km South-West of Gwalior.

Correct Answer:-B ( Bill Clinton )
Description:-  My Life is a 2004 autobiography written by former President of the United States Bill Clinton, who left office on January 20, 2001. It was released on June 22, 2004. The book was published by the Knopf Publishing Group; the book sold in excess of 2,250,000 copies. Clinton had received what was at the time the world’s highest book advance fee, believed to have been worth US$12 million; at the announcement of media personality Oprah Winfrey’s future weight loss book, it was said that her undisclosed advance fee had broken this record.

Correct Answer:-D ( Fatima Meer )
Description:-  Fatima Meer was a South African writer, academic, screenwriter, and prominent anti-apartheid activist. She was born in Durban, the largest city in what is now KwaZulu-Natal Province, into a family of nine, where her father, a newspaper editor, instilled in her a consciousness of the racial discrimination that existed in the country. She completed her schooling at the Durban Indian Girls High School and subsequently attended the University of the Witwatersrand where she was a member of a Trotskyist group and the University of Natal, where she completed a Masters degree in Sociology.

Correct Answer:-A ( The Village )
Description:-  Mulk Raj Anand (12 December, 1905 – 28 September, 2004) was an Indian writer in English, notable for his depiction of the lives of the poorer castes in traditional Indian society. One of the pioneers of Indo-Anglican fiction, he, together with R. K. Narayan, Ahmed Ali and Raja Rao, was one of the first India-based writers in English to gain an international readership. His work includes poetry and essays on a wide range of subjects, as well as autobiographies and novels. Prominent among his novels are The Village (1939).

Correct Answer:-A ( Nelson Mandela )
Description:-  Nelson Mandela is one of the great moral and political leaders of our time: an international hero whose lifelong dedication to the fight against racial oppression in South Africa won him the Nobel Peace Prize and the presidency of his country. Since his triumphant release in 1990 from more than a quarter-century of imprisonment, Mandela has been at the center of the most compelling and inspiring political drama in the world. As president of the African National Congress and head of South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement, he was instrumental in moving the nation toward multiracial government and majority rule. He is revered everywhere as a vital force in the fight for human rights and racial equality.

Correct Answer:-B ( Megasthenese )
Description:-  Lucius Flavius Arrianus ‘Xenophon’, known in English as Arrian, and Arrian of Nicomedia, was a Greek historian, a publ ic servant, a mi litary commander and a philosopher of the Roman period. Indica is also the name of a similar book by Megasthenes that also describes the history of India and was a major source from which Arrian drew. Megasthenes (ca. 350 – 290 BCE) was a Greek ethnographer and explorer in the Hellenistic period, author of the work Indica. He was born in Asia Minor (modern day Turkey) and became an ambassador of Seleucus I of the Seleucid dynasty possibly to Chandragupta Maurya in Pataliputra, India. However the exact date of his embassy is uncertain. Scholars place it before 298 BC, the date of Chandragupta’s death.

Correct Answer:-A ( Vikram Seth )
Description:-  He got Pravasi Bharatiya Samman in 2005. Vikram Seth (born 20 June, 1952) is an Indian author and poet. Vikram Seth was born on 20 June, 1952 in a Punjabi family to Leila and Prem Seth in Calcutta (now Kolkata). His family lived in many cities including the Bata Shoe Company town of Batanagar, Danapur near Patna, and in London. Having lived in London for many years, Seth now maintains residences near Salisbury, England, where he is a participant in local literary and cultural events, having bought and renovated the house of the Anglican poet George Herbert in 1996,and in Delhi, where he lives with his parents and keeps his extensive library and papers.

Correct Answer:-B ( Justice Ashok A. Desai )
Description:-  The second edition of the book, “Environmental Jurisprudence” written by Chief Justice of Uttaranchal High Court, Justice Ashok Desai, was released recently. This book deals with the legislative aspects of the conservation of biodiversity, of sustainable development, of population explosion, of global environmental regulations.

Correct Answer:-C ( “Jai Jawan Jai Kisan” —Lal Bahadur Shastri )
Description:-  Jai Jawan Jai Kisan was a slogan given to India by the Prime Minister of India Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1965. It means hail the soldier and hail the farmer. Soon after Shastri took over the prime ministership of India after Nehru’s death. India was attacked by Pakistan. At the same time there was scarcity of foodgrains in country. Shastri gave the slogan Jai Jawan Jai Kisan to enthuse the soldiers to defend India and simultaneously cheering farmers to do their best to increase the production of food grains to reduce dependence on import. It became a very popular slogan. After Pokaran tests in 1998 Atal Bihari Vajpayee added Jai Vigyan (Hail knowledge) to the slogan to underline the importance of knowledge in India’ progress.

Correct Answer:-C ( J. K. Rowling )
Description:-  Joanne “Jo” Rowling(born 31 July, 1965), pen name J. K. Rowling, is a British novelist, best known as the author of the Harry Potter fantasy series. The Potter books have gained worldwide attention, won multiple awards, and sold more than 400 million copies. They have become the best-selling book series in history, and been the basis for a popular series of films, in which Rowling had overall approval on the scripts as well as maintaining creative control by serving as a producer on the final instalment. Rowling conceived the idea for the series on a train trip from Manchester to London in 1990.

Correct Answer:-D ( Amartya Sen )
Description:-  The Argumentative Indian is a book written by Nobel Prize winning Indian economist Amartya Sen. It is a collection of essays that discuss India’s history and identity, focusing on the traditions of public debate and intellectual pluralism. Martha Nussbaum says the book “demonstrates the importance of public debate in Indian traditions generally.”The Argumentative Indian has brought together a selection of writings from Sen that outline the need to understand contemporary India in the light of its long argumentative tradition. The understanding and use of this argumentative tradition are critically important, Sen argues, for the success of India’s democracy, the defence of its secular politics, the removal of inequalities related to class, caste, gender and community, and the pursuit of sub-continental peace.

Correct Answer:-B ( John Ruskin )
Description:-  John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, water-colourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political economy. His writing styles and literary forms were equally varied. Ruskin’s political ideas, and Unto This Last in particular, later proved highly influential, praised and paraphrased in Gujarati by Gandhi, a wide range of autodidacts, the economist John A. Hobson and many of the founders of the British Labour party.