1. “This is a lovely place. The little river, the Esk, runs through a deep valley, which broadens out as it comes near the harbour.” Which popular destination and literary setting is being described?

   1. Sanditon in Jane Austen's unfinished novel

   2. Broadstairs in John Buchan's The 39 Steps

   3. Whitby in Bram Stoker's Dracula

   4. Launceston in Daphne du Maurier's Jamaica Inn

2. 

   “Mother died today,” is the unemotional opening of Albert Camus's novel The Outsider. In which French colonial city is it set?

   1. Algiers

   2. Casablanca

   3. Phnom Penh

   4. Dakar

3. 

   “I do not pretend to regret anything I shall leave in _______, except your society, my dearest friend.” Which county is the obnoxious Miss Bingley referring to in this line from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice?

   1. Hampshire

   2. Oxfordshire

   3. Sussex

   4. Hertfordshire

4. 

   Airstrip One, in Oceania, is the fictional setting of which major 20th-century novel

   1. Catch-22, by Joseph Heller

   2. 1984, by George Orwell

   3. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

   4. The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood

5. 

   In Booker prize winner Life of Pi, the eponymous Pi is named after what?

   1. The ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter

   2. Piscis Austrinus, a constellation in the southern hemisphere

   3. A swimming pool in Paris much loved by his father

   4. The international abbreviation for the Philippines

6. 

   In Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors, the two pairs of identical twins come from which cities?

   1. Venice and Padua

   2. Syracuse and Ephesus

   3. Verona and Mantua

   4. Athens and Messina

7. 

   “The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move. . . . Nobody’d be different.” Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye is talking about which museum?

   1. American Museum of Natural History, New York

   2. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

   3. Getty Center, Los Angeles

   4. Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC

8. 

   In Charles Dickens's novel, a penniless David Copperfield heads out of London to throw himself on the mercy of his estranged aunt Betsey Trotwood in which coastal town?

   1. Broadstairs

   2. Portsmouth

   3. Dover

   4. Yarmouth

9. 

   “Hotels are superstitious places. No thirteenth floor or room thirteen, no mirrors on the back of the door you come in through, stuff like that...” Which (in)famous hotel is this quotation about?

   1. The Bates motel in Robert Bloch's novel (and Hitchcock's film)

   2. Hotel New Hampshire in John Irving's book of the same name

   3. Bertram's Hotel in the Agatha Christie novel of the same name

   4. The Overlook Hotel in Stephen King's The Shining

10. 

    Elena Ferrante's novel My Brilliant Friend is the first of a quartet set in which city?

    1. Naples

    2. Rome

    3. Palermo

    4. Milan

11. 

    Khaled Hosseini's novel The Kite Runner is set in which country?

    1. Syria

    2. Iran

    3. Lebanon

    4. Afghanistan

12. 

    Kevin Kwan's novel Crazy Rich Asians, made into a film in 2018, tells of a clash between old and new money in which city?

    1. Hong Kong

    2. Shanghai

    3. Los Angeles

    4. Singapore

13. 

    “You’ve got a chance to start out all over again. A new place, new people, new sights. A clean slate. See, you can be anything you want with a fresh start.” Where did protagonist Quoyle make a new life in 1993 Pulitzer prize-winner The Shipping News by Annie Proulx (pictured)?

    1. Montana

    2. Baja California

    3. Newfoundland

    4. The Florida Keys

14. Novels Norwegian Wood, A Wild Sheep Chase and The Wind-up Bird Chronicle – all by the same author – unfold in which country?

    1. Scotland

    2. Japan

    3. Canada

    4. South Africa

15. 

    Best-selling fiction book in the US in 1931 and 1932 was The Good Earth by Pearl S Buck (pictured). Where is it set?

    1. California

    2. Argentina

    3. China

    4. Louisiana

Solutions

1:C - The unfortunate Lucy Westenra is holidaying in Whitby when the undead count begins stalking her, 2:A - Camus was born in Algeria and also set his novel The Plague and several short stories in the country, 3:D, 4:B - In the book, London is a regional capital in the super-state of Oceania, which includes the Americas and Australia, 5:C - In Yann Martel's 2001 novel, Santosh Patel names his younger son Piscine Molitor, for the art deco pool near the Bois de Boulogne, though the boy later tells schoolmates he's called after mathematical concept., 6:B - The play is set in Ephesus (Efes, in Turkey's İzmir Province), to which Antipholus travels from Syracuse (in Sicily) in search of his lost brother, 7:A - On his way to a date at the museum, Holden remembers in detail his school trips there, and staring at the 'Eskimo' in the display case who 'will never judge him back', 8:C - After many misadventures David finally arrives at his aunt's house, 'a very neat little cottage with cheerful bow windows', 9:D - In a trip to Colorado, King and his wife Tabitha stayed at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. "When we arrived," he wrote, "they were just getting ready to close for the season, and we found ourselves the only guests in the place — with all those long, empty corridors". They checked into room 217, which was said to be haunted. , 10:A - Her Neapolitan novels also include The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of the Lost Child, 11:D - His other acclaimed novels about Afghan families include And the Mountains Echoed and A Thousand Splendid Suns , 12:D, 13:C - The book was adapted for film in 2001 with Kevin Spacey, Judi Dench and Julianne Moore, 14:B - Haruki Murakami's novels and short stories are mostly set in Japan, but criticised by his country's literary establishment as "un-Japanese", 15:C - Buck lived mostly in China until the age of 40. The first of a trilogy, The Good Earth tells of Wang Lung's family and fortunes in a Chinese village

Scores

1. 11 and above.

   Well done: here's to when we can do more than travel from our armchairs

2. 6 and above.

   Not bad: you know your Stoker from your Salinger

3. 0 and above.

   Perhaps you didn't read as much as you'd planned during lockdown