When it comes to famous settings in literature, does your knowledge speak volumes or have you lost the plot?
“This is a lovely place. The little river, the Esk, runs through a deep valley, which broadens out as it comes near the harbour.” Which popular destination and literary setting is being described?
Sanditon, in Jane Austen’s unfinished novel
Broadstairs in John Buchan’s The 39 Steps
Whitby, in Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Launceston in Daphne du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn
“Mother died today,” is the unemotional opening of Albert Camus’s novel The Outsider. In which French colonial city is it set?
Algiers
Casablanca
Phnom Penh
Dakar
“I do not pretend to regret anything I shall leave in _______, except your society, my dearest friend.” Which county is the obnoxious Miss Bingley referring to in this line from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice?
Hampshire
Oxfordshire
Sussex
Hertfordshire
Airstrip One in Oceania, is the fictional setting of which major 20th-century novel
Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
1984, by George Orwell
Brave New World, by Isaac Asimov
The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood
In Booker prize winner Life of Pi, the eponymous Pi is named after what?
The ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter
Piscis Austrinus, a constellation in the southern hemisphere
A swimming pool in Paris much loved by his father
The international abbreviation for the Philippines
In Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors, the two pairs of identical twins come from which cities?
Venice and Padua
Syracuse and Ephesus
Verona and Mantua
Athens and Messina
“The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move. . . . Nobody’d be different.” Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye is talking about which museum?
American Museum of Natural History, New York
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Getty Center, Los Angeles
Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC
In Charles Dickens’s novel, a penniless David Copperfield heads out of London to throw himself on the mercy of his estranged aunt Betsey Trotwood in which coastal town?
Broadstairs
Portsmouth
Dover
Yarmouth
“Hotels are superstitious places. No thirteenth floor or room thirteen, no mirrors on the back of the door you come in through, stuff like that…” Which (in)famous hotel is this quotation about?
The Bates motel in Robert Bloch’s novel (and Hitchcock’s film)
Hotel New Hampshire in John Irving’s book of the same name
Evil Under the Sun, by Agatha Christie
The Overlook Hotel in Stephen King’s The Shining
Elena Ferrante’s novel My Brilliant Friend is the first of a quartet set in which city?
Naples
Rome
Palermo
Milan
Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner is set in which country?
Syria
Iran
Lebanon
Afghanistan
Kevin Kwan’s novel Crazy Rich Asians, made into a film in 2018, tells of a clash between old and new money in which city?
Hong Kong
Shanghai
Los Angeles
Singapore
“You’ve got a chance to start out all over again. A new place, new people, new sights. A clean slate. See, you can be anything you want with a fresh start.” Where did protagonist Quoyle follow his dreams in 1993 Pulitzer prize-winner The Shipping News by Annie Proulx (pictured)?
Montana
Baja California
Newfoundland
The Florida Keys
Novels Norwegian Wood, A Wild Sheep Chase and The Wind-up Bird Chronicle – all by the same author – unfold in which country?
Scotland
Japan
Canada
South Africa
Best-selling fiction book in the US in 1931 and 1932 was The Good Earth by Pearl S Buck (pictured). Where is it set?
California
Argentina
China
Louisiana
11 and above.
Well done: here’s to when we can do more than travel from our armchairs
6 and above.
Not bad: you know your Stoker from your Salinger
0 and above.
Good intentions about spending lockdown reading get waylaid, did they?
Continue reading…
Source: Gaurdian