1. Who are the children referred to in the title of Salman Rushdie’s Booker-winning novel Midnight’s Children?

   1. The yet-to-be-born offspring of Saleem Sinai and his wife to be, Padma Mangroli

   2. The sons and daughters of Parvati-the-witch, who cannot abide the light of day

   3. Children born between midnight and 1am on 15 August 1947

   4. Ghostly children living in a parallel world in the sewers of Mumbai

2. Which Indian novelist won the Booker prize in 1997?

   1. Kiran Desai

   2. Jhumpa Lahiri

   3. Arundhati Roy

   4. Anita Desai

3. Which Booker-winning Indian novelist said: "At a time when India is going through great changes and, with China, is likely to inherit the world from the west, it is important that writers like me try to highlight the brutal injustices of society"?

   1. Salman Rushdie

   2. Kiran Desai

   3. Vikram Seth

   4. Aravind Adiga

4. Which party rules the roost in the 1990s Mumbai of Rohinton Mistry’s Family Matters?

   1. Shiv Sena

   2. Bahujan Samaj party

   3. Liberal Democrats

   4. Samajwadi party

5. Waiting for the Mahatma is a 1955 novel featuring Mahatma Gandhi as a character. Who was the author?

   1. Anita Desai

   2. RK Narayan

   3. Rabindranath Tagore

   4. Amitav Ghosh

6. Which political movement features in Jhumpa Lahiri’s 2013 novel The Lowland, as one of two brothers is drawn into militancy?

   1. Indian National Congress

   2. Nationalist Congress Party

   3. Bharatiya Janata party

   4. The Naxalites

7. Which Indian politician's memoir bears the seemingly unreliable subtitle The Story of My Experiments with Truth?

   1. Indira Gandhi

   2. Mahatma Gandhi

   3. Rajiv Gandhi

   4. Sonia Gandhi

8. In which 1975 novel does Karim say: “The family’s been there since 1917 which is when we became the Nawabs, and if I ever care to stand for Parliament, they’d return me like a shot. Sometimes I think I would like to – after all, one is indian and wants to serve the country and all that – but you know, whenever we go to Khatm, Kitty gets a stomach upset due to the water”?

   1. Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

   2. The Seige of Krishnapur by JG Farrell

   3. Staying On by Paul Scott

   4. The Voyage Home by EM Forster

9. Which general election features in Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy?

   1. 1945

   2. 1952

   3. 1955

   4. 1962

10. Who was the author of Parineeta, a 1914 novella of marriage, class and religion in Kolkata?

    1. Raj Kamal Jha

    2. Vishalakshi Dakshinamurthy

    3. Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay

    4. Amit Chaudhuri

Solutions

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

Scores

1. 3 and above.

   You seem to have taken a bit of a drubbing at the polls. How about a recount?

2. 6 and above.

   Looks like you're heading for a hung parliament.

3. 10 and above.

   Congratulations – a landslide win.