American Novels Flashcards

1
Q

“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents!” is the opening line of which novel by Louisa May Alcott?

A

Little Women

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2
Q

Commonly named among the Great American Novels which 1884 novel by Mark Twain is told in the first person by the title character a friend of Tom Sawyer?

A

Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn

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3
Q

Although written before To Kill a Mockingbird which novel by Harper Lee was not published until 2015?

A

Go Set A Watchman

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4
Q

Which Tom Clancy character a Marine turned CIA analyst first appeared in the novel The Hunt for Red October?

A

Jack Ryan

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5
Q

A Game of Thrones is the first book in which series of novels by George R. R. Martin?

A

A Song Of Ice And Fire

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6
Q

Published in 1852 what is the name of the anti-slavery novel written by Harriet Beecher Stowe?

A

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

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7
Q

Who wrote the novel On the Road considered a defining work of the postwar Beat and Counterculture generations?

A

Jack Kerouac

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8
Q

What is the name of the Nantucket whaling ship that appears in the novel Moby-Dick by Herman Melville?

A

Pequod

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9
Q

In The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck what is the name of the poor family of tenant farmers driven from their Oklahoma home by drought?

A

Joad

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10
Q

Which literary genre is characterised by cynical detectives such as Philip Marlowe Sam Spade and Mike Hammer who witnessed daily the violence of organised crime that flourished during Prohibition?

A

Hardboiled

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11
Q

Who wrote The Hunger Games trilogy of young adult dystopian novels?

A

Suzanne Collins

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12
Q

An early work of gonzo journalism who wrote Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas?

A

Hunter S Thompson

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13
Q

Which semi-autobiographical novel written by Ernest Hemingway is told through the point of view of Lieutenant Frederic Henry an American serving as an ambulance driver in the Italian army during World War I?

A

A Farewell To Arms

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14
Q

Who wrote a series of six novels featuring the fictional Chinese American detective Charlie Chan?

A

Earl Derr Biggers

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15
Q

In the ‘Rabbit’ series of novels by John Updike which character is known as Rabbit?

A

Harry Angstrom

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16
Q

Who wrote the L.A. Quartet a cycle of crime fiction novels set in 1940s and 1950s Los Angeles?

A

James Ellroy

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17
Q

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller mainly follows the life of which U.S. Army Air Forces B-25 bombardier?

A

John Yossarian

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18
Q

Isabel Archer a young American woman “affronting her destiny” is the subject of which novel by Henry James?

A

The Portrait Of A Lady

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19
Q

Which novel won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction making Edith Wharton the first woman to win the prize?

A

The Age Of Innocence

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20
Q

Who is best known for his biographical novels including Lust for Life about the life of Vincent Van Gogh and The Agony and the Ecstasy about Michelangelo?

A

Irving Stone

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21
Q

Truman Capote labelled which of his novels which details the murders of the Clutter family as a “non-fiction novel”?

A

In Cold Blood

22
Q

Who wrote the crime novels The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity both of which have been adapted as motion pictures?

A

James M Cain

23
Q

Which novelist accidentally shot and killed his wife Joan Vollmer Adams in Mexico while trying to shoot a glass off her head?

A

William S Burroughs

24
Q

What is the sequel to the Anita Loos novel Gentleman Prefer Blondes?

A

But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes

25
Q

The title of which novel by William Faulkner is taken from a soliloquy of Act 5 of Macbeth?

A

The Sound And The Fury

26
Q

Which fictional detective created by Edgar Allan Poe makes his first appearance in Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue?

A

C Auguste Dupin

27
Q

Which 1959 political thriller novel by Richard Condon is about the son of a prominent US political family who is brainwashed into being an unwitting assassin for the Communist Party?

A

The Manchurian Candidate

28
Q

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is a 1906 novel written to portray the harsh conditions and exploited lives of workers in which industry in the United States?

A

Meat Packing

29
Q

A Time to Kill was the first novel by which author whose books have sold over 300 million copies worldwide?

A

John Grisham

30
Q

Who won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction twice in 1919 and 1922 for his novels The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams?

A

Booth Tarkington

31
Q

Which series of novels by James Fenimore Cooper includes The Last of the Mohicans and features Natty Bumppo in each novel?

A

The Leatherstocking Tales

32
Q

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane is the story of a young private named Henry Fleming and takes place during which war?

A

American Civil War

33
Q

Named after a Dutch artist which detective has appeared in over 20 novels by Michael Connelly?

A

Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch

34
Q

What is the name of the protagonist of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter who gives birth after committing adultery?

A

Hester Prynne

35
Q

Born in New York in 1936 who wrote the novels White Noise and Cosmopolis?

A

Don Delillo

36
Q

First published in 1955 which novel by J. P. Donleavy was banned both in Ireland and the United States of America by reason of obscenity?

A

The Ginger Man

37
Q

Invisible Man is the best known novel of which author who was named after an American essayist and poet who led the transcendentalist movement?

A

Ralph Waldo Ellison

38
Q

Who wrote The Hornet’s Nest in 2003 the first fictional publication by any president of the United States?

A

Jimmy Carter

39
Q

Which 1973 novel by Erica Jong may be regarded as a feminist classic?

A

Fear Of Flying

40
Q

The Stephen King novels Cujo The Dark Hall and Needful Things are all set in which fictional town in Maine?

A

Castle Rock

41
Q

Who wrote The City and the Pillar in 1948 which created controversy as the first major American novel to feature unambiguous homosexuality?

A

Gore Vidal

42
Q

The son of a comedy filmmaker and an actress who wrote the apocalyptic horror novel World War Z?

A

Max Brooks

43
Q

The Executioner’s Song is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Norman Mailer that depicts the events related to the execution of which criminal who demanded the implementation of his death sentence for two murders he committed in Utah?

A

Gary Gilmore

44
Q

Which novel by Philip Roth is an alternative history in which Franklin Delano Roosevelt is defeated in the presidential election of 1940 by Charles Lindbergh?

A

The Plot Against America

45
Q

The Tales of the City novels by Armistead Maupin are set in which American city?

A

San Francisco

46
Q

Which novel by Jonathan Franzen was selected for Oprah Winfrey’s book club in 2001 leading to a feud between Winfrey and Franzen which gained the novel widespread media attention?

A

The Corrections

47
Q

The Cthulhu Mythos is a shared fictional universe based on the work of which horror writer who died in poverty aged 46?

A

H P Lovecraft

48
Q

Which 1994 novel by David Guterson was made into a 1999 film starring Ethan Hawke?

A

Snow Falling On Cedars

49
Q

The debut novel of Thomas Pynchon which work with a very short title describes the exploits of a discharged U.S. Navy sailor named Benny Profane?

A

V.

50
Q

“So we beat on boats against the current borne back ceaselessly into the past” is the last line of which novel by F Scott Fitzgerald?

A

The Great Gatsby