A bunch of replies this week, but only one person managed to crack all four questions and make it onto the honour roll. Roopa Machaiah, VJ, Sandeip and Vivek ND came within one answer of joining this week’s winner:

 

 

 

1. Which novelist, born in Trinidad and educated at Oxford, wrote novels like A Hot Country, Fireflies and The Chip-Chip Gatherers, in which he groused plentifully about the post-imperial societies that Britain left behind? (Full name, please.)

A. Shiva Naipaul (and not, as a couple of people for this trick question, his brother Vidhiadhar)

2. Identify the writer below:

A. Rohinton Mistry

3. Fill in the blanks of this Nathaniel Hawthorne quotation:

“Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into _________ _____.”

A. “unaccustomed earth,” from where Jhumpa Lahiri derived the title of her most recent book.

4. Another identification. Who is the author?

A. Bharati Mukherjee

Congratulations to one of our regulars, Sumathi Chandrashekaran, for being the sole occupant of the honour roll this week!