The Penguin/Independent summer books quiz

Blinded by sunlight? Drenched in factor cream? Bored by the beach? Try our summer quiz instead and win a treasure trove of Penguin Books plus an original Thirties-style case to keep them in

Friday 28 July 1995 18:02 EDT
Comments

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

Answers to the questions below should be sent to reach Penguin Books (Summer Quiz), 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ by noon on Friday 11 August. The first set of correct answers will receive a Penguin Isokon Donkey magazine-rack-cum-bookrack, designed by Egon Riss in 1939 and promoted by Penguin Books in its early years as the "ideal receptacle" for paperback titles. The winner will also receive 60 top Penguin titles, representative of the Penguin publishing canon, from Crime and Poetry to Penguin Classics and Modern Classics. The quiz is not open to employees of the Independent or of Penguin Books. The answers, and the name of the winner, will be published on Saturday 26 August. The judges' decision is final.

1. Pictures

Here are the faces of six distinguished Penguin authors. Who are they?

2. First Lines

Identify the following first lines from famous books:

a) I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me ...

b) Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes.

c) Does such a thing as "the fatal flaw", that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature?

d) We were at preparation, when the headmaster came in, followed by a new boy dressed in "civvies" and a school servant carrying a big desk.

e) It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.

f) In 18th-century France there lived a man who was one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages

g) "I have been here before," I said; I had been there before, first with Sebastian more than twenty years ago on a cloudless day in June, when the ditches were creamy with meadowsweet and the air heavy with all the scents of summer ...

h) "Now what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but facts. Facts alone are wanted in life".

i) I have resolved on an enterprise which has no precedent, and which, once complete, will have no imitator. My purpose is to display to my kind a portrait in every way true to nature, and the man I portray will be myself.

j) The first sound in the mornings was the clumping of the mill-girls' clogs down the cobbled street. Earlier than that, I suppose, there were factory whistles which I was never awake to hear.

k) In these times of ours, though concerning the exact year there is no need to be precise, a boat of dirty and disreputable appearance, with two figures in it, floated on the Thames ...

3. Poetry

Identify the following extracts, giving the title and author of the poems from which they are taken:

a) He never came a wink too soon,/ Nor brought too long a day,

b) That corpse you planted last year in your garden,/ Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?

c) Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,/ And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

d) Haply I may remember,/ And haply may forget.

e) When I was three,/ I was hardly me.

f) From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,/ Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow

g) you will put on a dress of guilt/ and shoes with broken high ideals

h) At Dirty Dick's and Sloppy Joe's/ We drank our liquor straight

i) Dear God! The very houses seem asleep;/ And all that mighty heart is lying still!

j) So daddy, I'm finally through

k) I struck the board, and cried, No more./ I will abroad.

4. Women

a) For which of her novels did Iris Murdoch win the Booker Prize?

b) Name Isabel Allende's story-telling heroine.

c) Which Angela Carter reworking of a traditional fairytale was made into a film of the same name?

d) What is Camille Paglia's day job?

e) Which famous novelist was the lover of Anais Nin?

f) Where is Aphra Behn buried?

5. Classics

a) Macgregor is the clan name of which Walter Scott hero?

b) Which of Virginia Woolf's novels was made into film starring Tilda Swinton?

c) What is the name of Captain Ahab's boat in Moby Dick?

d) In which decade was Lady Chatterley's Lover first published?

e) Along the banks of which river is Conrad's Heart of Darkness set?

f) Which 1920s novel features a potted history of English prose in a single chapter?

g) Which fictional gothic pile employs a malevolent cook called Swelter?

6. Places

a) What love affair, set on Clapham Common, ended abruptly and prompted a grief-stricken novelist to hire a private detective?

b) All Said And Done is the final volume of which French philosopher's autobiography?

c) Which satirist, known as the "laughing devil of San Francisco's news media", wrote The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary?

d) Which world-shaking event celebrates its 50th anniversary this year and gave its name to a book written as an act of contrition by an American journalist called John Hersey?

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in