Literature for grades 7–8: questions with answers
The Literature questions for grades 7–8 from the game, with the correct answers and an explanation for each.
Who wrote Brave New World?
- George Orwell
- Ray Bradbury
- H. G. Wells
- Aldous Huxley
Correct answer: Aldous Huxley — Huxley's 1932 novel imagines a future where people are bred in factories and kept happy with the drug soma.
Which captain hunts the white whale in Moby-Dick?
- Captain Nemo
- Captain Ahab
- Captain Cook
- Captain Hook
Correct answer: Captain Ahab — Ahab lost his leg to the whale and drives his crew across the oceans for revenge; Herman Melville published the novel in 1851.
Who wrote The Great Gatsby?
- Ernest Hemingway
- John Steinbeck
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
- William Faulkner
Correct answer: F. Scott Fitzgerald — The 1925 novel of the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby sold poorly in Fitzgerald's lifetime and became a classic only after his death.
Who wrote Ulysses, set in Dublin on a single day in 1904?
- Samuel Beckett
- Oscar Wilde
- W. B. Yeats
- James Joyce
Correct answer: James Joyce — The day, 16 June, is celebrated in Dublin every year as Bloomsday after the hero Leopold Bloom.
Who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird?
- Harper Lee
- Toni Morrison
- John Steinbeck
- Truman Capote
Correct answer: Harper Lee — The 1960 novel about the lawyer Atticus Finch won the Pulitzer Prize; Lee's childhood friend Truman Capote inspired the character Dill.
Who wrote Jane Eyre?
- Emily Brontë
- Charlotte Brontë
- Anne Brontë
- Elizabeth Gaskell
Correct answer: Charlotte Brontë — Charlotte Brontë published the novel in 1847 under the male pen name Currer Bell.
Who wrote Madame Bovary?
- Stendhal
- Honoré de Balzac
- Gustave Flaubert
- Émile Zola
Correct answer: Gustave Flaubert — Flaubert was put on trial for immorality after the novel appeared in 1857, and was acquitted.
Who wrote the novel The Stranger (L'Étranger)?
- Jean-Paul Sartre
- Albert Camus
- André Gide
- Marcel Proust
Correct answer: Albert Camus — The 1942 novel opens with the narrator Meursault learning of his mother's death; Camus won the Nobel Prize in 1957.
Which French novelist wrote the seven-volume In Search of Lost Time?
- Marcel Proust
- Émile Zola
- Victor Hugo
- Honoré de Balzac
Correct answer: Marcel Proust — Proust's narrator is carried back to childhood by the taste of a madeleine cake dipped in tea.
Who wrote the play The Cherry Orchard?
- Maxim Gorky
- Nikolai Gogol
- Ivan Turgenev
- Anton Chekhov
Correct answer: Anton Chekhov — Chekhov's last play was staged in 1904, months before his death; he also worked as a doctor all his life.
Who wrote The Master and Margarita?
- Mikhail Bulgakov
- Boris Pasternak
- Vladimir Nabokov
- Mikhail Sholokhov
Correct answer: Mikhail Bulgakov — In the novel the Devil visits Stalin's Moscow; Bulgakov finished it before his death in 1940, but it was not published until 1966.
Who wrote the novel Siddhartha?
- Thomas Mann
- Hermann Hesse
- Franz Kafka
- Stefan Zweig
Correct answer: Hermann Hesse — Hesse's 1922 tale of a young man's search for enlightenment in ancient India became a cult book in the 1960s.
In which language did Franz Kafka write?
- Czech
- Yiddish
- Hungarian
- German
Correct answer: German — Kafka lived in Prague but belonged to its German-speaking Jewish minority; he asked his friend Max Brod to burn his manuscripts.
Tove Jansson, creator of the Moomins, was from which country?
- Sweden
- Norway
- Finland
- Denmark
Correct answer: Finland — Jansson belonged to Finland's Swedish-speaking minority and wrote the Moomin books in Swedish.
Which poet was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1913)?
- Rabindranath Tagore
- Kahlil Gibran
- Yasunari Kawabata
- Wole Soyinka
Correct answer: Rabindranath Tagore — The Bengali poet won for Gitanjali; he also wrote the words of the national anthems of India and Bangladesh.
Who is Don Quixote's loyal squire?
- Sancho Panza
- Dulcinea del Toboso
- Rocinante
- Figaro
Correct answer: Sancho Panza — The practical, proverb-loving peasant Sancho rides a donkey beside his master and is promised an island to govern.
Which country was the poet Pablo Neruda from?
- Argentina
- Mexico
- Chile
- Peru
Correct answer: Chile — Neruda won the Nobel Prize in 1971 and died in 1973, days after the military coup in Chile.
Who wrote The Decameron?
- Dante Alighieri
- Petrarch
- Giovanni Boccaccio
- Niccolò Machiavelli
Correct answer: Giovanni Boccaccio — Ten young people fleeing the plague of 1348 tell a hundred stories over ten days outside Florence.
Who wrote The Name of the Rose?
- Italo Calvino
- Primo Levi
- Alberto Moravia
- Umberto Eco
Correct answer: Umberto Eco — Eco's 1980 medieval murder mystery, set in a monastery, was his first novel; he was a professor of semiotics.
Who wrote the tragedy Oedipus Rex?
- Aeschylus
- Sophocles
- Euripides
- Aristophanes
Correct answer: Sophocles — Oedipus unknowingly kills his father and marries his mother; Aristotle held the play up as the model tragedy.