On this day in 1815, Jane Austen’s Emma was published. The novel has been adapted for films, television and stage including a Bollywood production starring Sonam Kapoor. This week’s quiz is about literary works whose titles are the names of the primary protagonist

1.      Richard Bach wrote which novel in the sixties about a search for perfection which climbed to the top of bestseller charts around the world?

2.      About which legendary pulp fiction hero did Chilean author Isabel Allende write a 2005 novel, styled like a biography?

3.      Which author commissioned a statue of his most famous character which was erected overnight in 1912 as a surprise to the children of London?

4.      Which children’s novel by an extremely versatile author is about the travails of a precocious child in a school run by the tyrannical Miss Trunchbull?

5.      Novels named Micah Clarke, Rodney Stone and Sir Nigel were three of the lesser known works written by which Scottish author. And which was his most famous character?

6.      Which eponymous character, also celebrated in film started as a column in the Independent by the author about single life in London?

7.      In 1982, which author wrote a famous pastiche of the 17th century classic Don Quixote, his primary protagonist being a priest who lived in the La Mancha district of Spain?

8.      According to the novel, which famous 18th century protagonist actually had the German surname Kreutnzer before he changed it to a name easier to pronounce for Englishmen?

9.      Which famous character does Horace Holly and his ward Leo Vincey meet in a kingdom deep in the African interior in a classic work by Rider Haggard?

10.  Which orphaned son of an Irish soldier and a former Nanny who roams the streets of Lahore and sometimes runs errands for the horse trader Mahbub Khan is regarded as one of the most famous characters in English fiction?

Answers

1.      Jonathan Livingstone Seagull

2.      Diego de la Vega, better known as Zorro

3.      James Barrie, Peter Pan

4.      Matilda, by Roald Dahl

5.      Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes

6.      Bridget Jones, Helen Fielding

7.      Graham Greene, Monsignor Quixote

8.      Robinson Crusoe

9.      The Queen Ayesha, known as ‘She’

10.  Kim, by Rudyard Kipling

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