Award Winning Literature #2

Hint

Answer

Among this author's novels were His Second Wife, Silent Storms, and The Harbor. His story of an intergenerational clan earned him the first Pulitzer Prize for the Novel. Identify the author of His Family.

This author titled the biographies of her mother and father The Exile and Fighting Angel, respectively. The daughter of Presbyterian missionaries, she introduced U.S. readers to her adopted country in East Wind, West Wind. Identify this Nobel laureate and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for The Good Earth.

This man's play Caligula [kuh-LIG-yuh-luh] was an early entry in the Theatre of the Absurd. Philosophy permeated his essay The Myth of Sisyphus and his novel The Fall. Identify this Nobel laureate in literature, who also wrote the novels The Plague and The Stranger.

After teaching school for years, this woman began a diplomatic career that took her to Nice [NEECE], Genoa, Lisbon, and Madrid. She also published poetry collections titled Wine Press, Destruction, and Tenderness. Name this Nobel laureate poet of Sonnets of Death.

This novel intertwines the lives of its narrator and a rising political boss. Jack Burden discovers details of his past as he witnesses Willie Stark's rise and assassination. What is this Pulitzer winner by Robert Penn Warren?

This writer created the biography of a fictional 20th-century composer in his novel Doctor Faustus. He fictionalized his family's socioeconomic decline in Buddenbrooks, while Freud's psychological theories influenced his novella Death in Venice. Who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in part for The Magic Mountain?

This author earned the National Book Critics Circle Award for Song of Solomon. Like most of her novels, Sula, The Bluest Eye, and Tar Baby examine the African-American experience. Name this Nobel laureate, who also won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Beloved.

Inspired by real-life events at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, this novel sees African-American high school student, Elwood Curtis, sent to a reformatory school in which students face the threats of corporal punishment, sexual assault, and murder. Name this acclaimed novel for which Colson Whitehead won his second Pulitzer Prize.

This author collected World War Two-era oral histories in The Unwomanly Face of War and Last Witnesses. The author of Chernobyl Prayer and Second-hand Time, she is one of the few nonfiction writers to earn a Nobel Prize for Literature. Identify this author who, in 2020, left her home in Belarus for exile in Germany.

Later made into an Oscar-winning film starring Nicole Kidman and Meryl Streep, this acclaimed novel details the lives of three women from different generations and how each character relates to a classic novel, Mrs. Dalloway. A primary character in this work is the author of Mrs. Dolloway, Virginia Woolf. Name this Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Michael Cunningham.

In 2021, this poet read her “Chorus of the Captains” at the Super Bowl and released her best-selling book of poetry, Call Us What We Carry. Identify the former National Youth Poet Laureate whose popularity exploded following a reading of her poem, “The Hill We Climb” at the inauguration of President Joe Biden.

The framing device used in this novel is a 45th high school reunion attended by the author’s frequently-used narrator, Nathan Zuckerman. Zuckerman learns of the fate of former classmate Seymour “Swede” Levov [luh-vohv] whose successful life was destroyed when his daughter set off a fatal explosion in protest of the Vietnam War. Give the name of this Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Phillip Roth.

In this globe-trotting novel, a struggling writer embarks on a global book tour in an effort to avoiding coming to terms with his pending 50th birthday and a recent breakup with a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. What novel, written by Andrew Sean Greer, won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction?

The name of this novel comes from Johnathan Swift’s essay, Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting. Set in 1960’s New Orleans, the novel follows the efforts of Ignatius J. Reilly as he attempts to find employment. For what novel did John Kennedy Toole earn a posthumous Pulitzer Prize?

A former refugee during the Zanzibar Revolution, this author set his novel Paradise in Tanzania and his novel Desertion in Kenya. Name this Pulitzer-winning author of By the Sea.

The playwright of such dramas as Murder in the Cathedral and The Cocktail Party, he remains best known as one of the central figures in American Modernist poetry. Among his poems are “The Wasteland”, “The Hollow Men”, and “Four Quartets”. Name this poet who first gained fame with the publication of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock.”

In this acclaimed novel, a teenager receives a gris-gris bag from his grandfather, allowing him to communicate with spirits, typically those who have died by violent means. That teenager, JoJo, works to help guide the spirits to the afterlife while dealing with the return of his father from prison. Name this for which Jesmyn Ward won the National Book Award.

Among the large cast of characters in this novel are former bandmates Bennie and Scottie, kleptomaniac Sasha, and record label executive Bennie Salazar. Give the name of for this collection of interrelated stories for which Jennifer Egan received the National Book Critics Circle Award as well as the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Though he was nominated for a Nobel Prize for Peace in 1939, he ultimately won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1953. Much of his best-remembered writing, such as The World Crisis and The Second World War, focuses on his as a world leader during World War Two. Name this British statesman who served as the country’s prime minister from 1940 to 1945.

This dramatist of Ah! Wilderness and Anna Christie received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1936. Who is, perhaps, best remembered for the plays The Iceman Cometh and Long Day’s Journey into Night?

Billy Bob Thornton directed the film adaptation of this novel, which starred Matt Damon as lead character John Grady Cole. The first in the author’s “Border’s Trilogy”, it was the winner of both the National Book Award and National Book Critic’s Circle Award. Name this novel about a teenage cowboy’s escape to Mexico, written by Cormac McCarthy.

This 1931 novel was the first of a trilogy which continued with Sons and A House Divided. Beginning on the day a slave, O-Lan, is to marry the poor farmer, Wang Lung, the novel explores life in a Chinese village in the early 1900’s. Name this Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Pearl S. Buck.

This writer explored his mother’s suicide in A Sorrow Beyond Dreams. He is typically noted for creating deadpan characters such as those in his film The Left-Handed Woman and novel The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick. Name this Austrian, German-language Nobel laureate.

Two of this poet’s best-known poems were written in 1865 during a period of great national mourning in American history. Who was inspired by the death of President Lincoln to write the poems “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” and “O Captain! My Captain!”?

A key figure in the dramatic movement Theater of the Absurd, this Irish writer was a longtime resident of Paris, producing much of his work in both English and French. The winner of the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature, he was the author of such novels as Dream of Fair to Middling Women and Murphy. Identify this writer best known for plays such as Waiting for Godot.

Sharing many similarities to Homer’s Odyssey, this novel involves a soldier’s return home after fighting in a war. In this novel, the solider is returning to his love, Ada Monroe, after being wounded in the Civil War and deserting the Confederate army. What novel, featuring the character W.P. Inman, earned Charles Frazier a National Book Award?

This novel’s author spent more than a decade working on its dense plot concerning Corporal Stefan, a reincarnation of Jesus Christ, and his service in World War One. For this novel, the 1949 Pulitzer Prize was awarded to William Faulkner. Give the name of this influential work, a name that references a certain time of literary genre.

The four-word title of this novel comes from a poem by Ernest Dawson. Set in the aftermath of the “March to the Sea” led by General William Sherman, the novel earned a Pulitzer Prize in 1937. Name this novel by Margaret Mitchell which introduced the characters Ashley Wilkes, Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara.