The books quiz of 2025 – set by Mick Herron, Bernardine Evaristo, Ali Smith and more | Books

1. 1.BERNARDINE EVARISTO
   Who is considered to be the world’s first male or female author?

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2. 2.Approximately how many books are published in the UK annually, including self-publishing?

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3. 3.Where do these lines of text originate: “we are untamed / a wilderness of women / we are waste ground / what a waste love / nothing grows on us / sterile and barren / an un-useful female / empty as church pews / the wind rattles its fists / inside our wombs / come now, snake boy / come now, heretic healer”?

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4. 4.SARA PASCOE On the cover of Tina Fey’s autobiography, which body part has she borrowed from a hairy man?

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5. 5.Kingsley Amis’s Jim was …

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6. 6.The novel Grown Ups was written by:

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7. 7.MICK HERRON Who played the first corpse in the first episode of the TV series based on Ann Cleeves’s Vera Stanhope novels?

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8. 8.Whose favoured headgear was a hunting accessory?

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9. 9.Who wrote the novel Red Christmas, in which armed terrorists take control of a snowbound hotel?

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10. 10.PHIL WANG In Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, what is Sal Paradise’s favourite diner treat?

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11. 11.Madeline Miller’s Circe is a novel centred on a secondary character from which ancient epic?

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12. 12.In which of Dan Brown’s books does his best-loved protagonist, Robert Langdon, make his first appearance?

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13. 13.YAEL VAN DER WOUDEN In which of the following essays can the careful reader find the phrase “dead and alive”, which inspired the title of Zadie Smith’s new collection?

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14. 14.In Torrey Peters’s Stag Dance, what do the lumberjacks pin upon themselves in order to indicate that they’d like to be courted as a “skooch”, a lady, for the dance?

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15. 15.In the opening pages of Jo Harkin’s The Pretender, who do we find out is our main character’s greatest enemy?

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16. 16.WILLIAM BOYD Muriel Spark’s maiden name was … ?

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17. 17.Who wrote these lines: “But now, after the kindling of so many memories, the first touch of her body, musical and strange and perfumed, sent through him a keen pang of lust”?

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18. 18.Whose work did FR Leavis acclaim, in 1932, as “one of the essential new achievements in modern poetry”?

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19. 19.NUSSAIBAH YOUNIS The line “The rest of the time we respectfully forgave each other for utterly failing to be what we felt we deserved” is from which novel?

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20. 20.In May 2025, which novel won the Dylan Thomas prize?

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21. 21.Which of these is not a character in The Trees by Percival Everett?

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22. 22.ADAM KAY AI firm Anthropic settled a lawsuit with 500,000 authors in September. How much did they receive per book?

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23. 23.What was the first career of Dan Brown, who this year published his eighth novel?

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24. 24.The brilliant Tom Lehrer died this July, aged 97. Asked about remaining single, which book did he mention? “I have a notoriously short attention span. I can barely concentrate on … let alone sustain a relationship”

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25. 25.ALI SMITH “Shall I pick the eyes out of a story for £40?” Who said this when someone wanted to edit their short story?

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26. 26.Whose recent memoir, the name of which is a Chekhov reference in a comic story, coalesces round nuclear warfare and HG Wells’s love life?

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27. 27.“Doesn’t anyone in France know that after you’ve turned fourteen, rolling the eyes is completely unacceptable?” In whose vision of our times is this seemingly throwaway line?

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28. 28.SARAH MOSS In Jane Eyre, the superintendent of Lowood school gives Jane and Helen a secret bedtime snack of:

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29. 29.When William Wordsworth wandered lonely as a cloud, he was with:

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30. 30.There is a longstanding rumour that Mary and Percy Shelley first had sex:

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31. 31.FERDIA LENNON Nobel Laureate Samuel Beckett used to do the school run for which famous wrestler?

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32. 32.Muhammad Ali’s autobiography The Greatest was edited by which author?

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33. 33.The title of Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime is inspired by a line from which Sherlock Holmes tale?

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