Around the world in books

Get in the global spirit by testing your knowledge of those writers who have set their books on foreign soil
  
  


  1. The agoraphobic writer Stef Penney won the Costa award with a debut set in the northern wilds, without travelling any further than the British Library for research. But where was The Tenderness of Wolves set?

    1. Siberia

    2. Canada

    3. Greenland

    4. Wigan

  2. Joseph O'Neill tells the story of a cricket-obsessed businessman from dreams of a stadium to death in a canal in Netherland, but which sticky wicket is he batting on?

    1. Mumbai

    2. Lagos

    3. New York

    4. Moscow

  3. In which Julian Barnes novel does the hero visit the Paris of the 1968 riots?

    1. Metroland

    2. Staring At The Sun

    3. Talking It Over

    4. Before She Met Me

  4. Who travels the world looking for the meaning of life and finally concludes that happiness is to be found in tending one's garden?

    1. Marco Polo

    2. Rasselas

    3. Candide

    4. Don Quixote

  5. Where is Louis de Bernieres's first novel set?

    1. Greece

    2. South America

    3. Turkey

    4. Cephalonia

  6. Which member of the Freud family wrote a novel about a young hippy mother finding herself in Morocco?

    1. Matthew Freud

    2. Esther Freud

    3. Emma Freud

    4. Bella Freud

  7. In E Annie Proulx's The Shipping News, where does Brooklyn-born Quoyle relocate after the death of his wife?

    1. Newfoundland

    2. Maine

    3. Wyoming

    4. Nova Scotia

  8. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun charts the story of an African civil war, but where?

    1. Sudan

    2. Algeria

    3. Nigeria

    4. The Democratic Republic of Congo

  9. Which Jeanette Winterson novel is set in Paris, Capri and cyberspace?

    1. The.Powerbook

    2. Written on the Body

    3. Boating for Beginners

    4. The Passion

  10. Which American writer tells the story of a nine-year-old girl who spends a year in an English cathedral town?

    1. Douglas Coupland

    2. Nicholson Baker

    3. Armistead Maupin

    4. John Irving

Solutions

1:B, 2:C, 3:A, 4:C, 5:B, 6:B, 7:A, 8:C, 9:A, 10:B

Scores

  1. 3 and above.

    Oh dear. But think of it this way. The literary world is your oyster.

  2. 7 and above.

    Not bad. But not really good either. Perhaps you should take another spin?

  3. 10 and above.

    Excellent - or should I say "wunderbar"? Your armchair is clearly very well-travelled.

 

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