1. In the short story My Neighbour, the narrator announces, "Sometimes I absolutely dance with apprehension around the telephone, the receiver at my ear, and yet can't help divulging secrets." Who is the writer?

   1. John le Carré

   2. EF Benson

   3. Franz Kafka

   4. Helen Simpson

2. In Muriel Spark’s macabre novel Memento Mori, what are elderly characters told by an anonymous caller?

   1. "Remember you must die"

   2. "Death is not the end"

   3. "You are in the prime of your life"

   4. "Please connect me to Peckham 465"

3. At the end of The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby’s telephone wire is being kept open for a long distance call. Where is the longed-for call supposed to be coming from?

   1. Atlanta

   2. Detroit

   3. Montreal

   4. London

4. "When he was at home he spent hours on the telephone with his disciples. After a fashion, he kept their secrets. At least he didn’t quote them by name." Which of Saul Bellow’s protagonists does this refer to?

   1. Herzog

   2. Ravelstein

   3. Von Humboldt Fleisher

   4. Wilhelm Adler

5. Which French writer said that the telephone is "a supernatural instrument before whose miracles we used to stand amazed, and which we now employ without giving it a thought …"?

   1. Marcel Proust

   2. Jean-Paul Sartre

   3. Albert Camus

   4. Patrick Modiano

6. "What pests the gentler sex were when they got hold of a telephone. The instrument seemed to go to their heads like a drug." Which author?

   1. Martin Amis

   2. PG Wodehouse

   3. Raymond Chandler

   4. Kingsley Amis

7. Whose leading character frequently dialled 1471 to check who had called them?

   1. Jonathan Franzen

   2. Helen Fielding

   3. Zadie Smith

   4. Ian Fleming

8. In Mental Telegraphy, Mark Twain argues that "the telegraph and telephone are going to become too slow and wordy for our needs." What is proposed instead?

   1. Video-phone

   2. Mind-phone

   3. Morse Code

   4. Telepathy through supernatural means

9. "What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it." Which celebrated central character’s heartfelt response to literature is this?

   1. Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye

   2. Sal Paradise in On the Road

   3. Adrian Mole in Sue Townsend’s series

   4. Zoella in Girl Online

10. "The phone had preserved the very essence, the bright vibration, of her vocal cords, the little "leap" in her larynx, the laugh clinging to the contour of the phrase, as if afraid in girlish glee to slip off the quick words it rode..." Which Nabokovian heroine?

    1. Lolita

    2. Ada

    3. Laura

    4. Colette

Solutions

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

Scores

1. 5 and above.

   Oh dear. You dialled the wrong number again, again, and again. Get back to the yellow pages of literature.

2. 7 and above.

   Well done! We can hear you loud and clear.

3. 10 and above.

   Impressive! You’ve obviously called on all the great writers over the years.