Nobel Prize in Literature Quiz

1. Which American novelist won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954?

1. Ernest Hemingway
2. F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. John Steinbeck
4. William Faulkner

2. Toni Morrison became the first Black woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Which year?

1. 1987
2. 1990
3. 1993
4. 1997

3. Gabriel García Márquez won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982. He was from which country?

1. Argentina
2. Colombia
3. Cuba
4. Mexico

4. Which British author won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017?

1. Ian McEwan
2. Kazuo Ishiguro
3. Martin Amis
4. Salman Rushdie

5. Samuel Beckett won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969. He is best known for which play?

1. Endgame
2. Happy Days
3. Krapp's Last Tape
4. Waiting for Godot

6. The Nobel Prize in Literature was established in 1901. Who endowed the Nobel Prizes?

1. A Swedish government fund
2. A Swedish royal foundation
3. Alfred Nobel, inventor of dynamite
4. The European Academy of Sciences

7. Albert Camus won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957. He was from which country?

1. Algeria (French Algeria)
2. Belgium
3. France
4. Switzerland

8. Which author famously refused the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964?

1. Boris Pasternak
2. Doris Lessing
3. Jean-Paul Sartre
4. Samuel Beckett

9. Pablo Neruda, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971, was a poet from which country?

1. Argentina
2. Chile
3. Mexico
4. Spain

10. The Nobel Prize in Literature 2016 was controversially awarded to which American musician?

1. Bob Dylan
2. Bruce Springsteen
3. Leonard Cohen
4. Paul Simon

11. William Faulkner won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949. He is known for his novels set in which fictional US county?

1. Jefferson County
2. Maycomb County
3. Sutpen County
4. Yoknapatawpha County

12. Doris Lessing, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007, grew up primarily in which country?

1. England
2. Kenya
3. Rhodesia (Zimbabwe)
4. South Africa

13. Which Japanese author, who wrote Kafka on the Shore and Norwegian Wood, has been frequently predicted to win the Nobel Prize in Literature but hasn't yet?

1. Banana Yoshimoto
2. Haruki Murakami
3. Kenzaburō Ōe
4. Yasunari Kawabata

14. Seamus Heaney, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995, was from which country?

1. Northern Ireland
2. Republic of Ireland
3. Scotland
4. Wales

15. Mo Yan, winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature, is from which country?

1. China
2. Japan
3. South Korea
4. Taiwan

16. Which Polish poet won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996?

1. Adam Zagajewski
2. Czesław Miłosz
3. Wisława Szymborska
4. Zbigniew Herbert

17. What is the Nobel Prize in Literature awarded for according to Alfred Nobel's will?

1. 'The most outstanding work in an ideal direction' — can be for one work or a lifetime
2. A specific outstanding work published that year
3. Lifetime achievement across a body of work
4. The most commercially successful novel of the decade

18. Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. She is from which country and is best known for which form?

1. Australia, poetry
2. Canada, short stories
3. UK, essays
4. USA, novels

19. The 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Peter Handke from Austria, causing significant controversy. Why?

1. He had defended Serbia's conduct during the Yugoslav Wars and spoken at Slobodan Milošević's funeral
2. He had plagiarised another work
3. He publicly criticized the Nobel Committee
4. He was too young at 27

20. Rudyard Kipling won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907. Which of his works features a boy raised by wolves in the Indian jungle?

1. Kim
2. Plain Tales from the Hills
3. The Jungle Book
4. The Just So Stories