Read Between the Lines

Question: Which of these is required reading at Hogwarts, fifth year?

Answer: Miranda Goshawk’s textbook The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 5 is required reading in the fifth year at Hogwarts, where Harry Potter goes to school.

Question: From which of these works does Thackeray’s Vanity Fair take its name?

Answer: The Pilgrim’s Progress is a religious work by John Bunyan about a man’s journey through such allegorical realms as the “City of Destruction,” “Hill Difficulty,” and “Vanity Fair.”

Question: In which country is Frankenstein set?

Answer: Frankenstein tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a Swiss student of natural science who creates an artificial man from pieces of corpses and brings his creature to life.

Question: What is Japan’s oldest major novel?

Answer: The Tale of Genji is one of the world’s most important novels. It was written in the early 1000s by Shikibu Murasaki, a noblewoman.

Question: What disaster occurs in Robinson Crusoe?

Answer: Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) tells the story of a man who is shipwrecked on a deserted island.

Question: In what country is T.H. White’s The Once and Future King set?

Answer: T.H. White’s novel The Once and Future King is about the legend of King Arthur. It is set in what is now England.

Question: What is the name of a novel by Vikas Swarup?

Answer: Published in 2008, Vikas Swarup’s Six Suspects is a crime thriller set in Delhi.

Question: In which century does Ivanhoe take place?

Answer: Ivanhoe (1819), Sir Walter Scott’s most enduringly popular novel, takes place in 12th-century England, during the height of the Middle Ages.

Question: In the Odyssey, what term is used to describe the goddess Dawn?

Answer: The Odyssey is known for the stylistic quirk whereby each character is associated with a set of "Homeric epithets," or fixed descriptions. Thus, Dawn is nearly always "rosy-fingered."

Question: Which of these books was not written in the nineteenth century?

Answer: The Puritan poet John Milton published Paradise Lost, his masterpiece, in 1667. It is one of the most important works in Western literature.