Another Russian Literature Quiz

Question: Which Russian writer was forced by his country to decline the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958?

Answer: Boris Pasternak’s novel Doctor Zhivago (1957) helped win him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958 but aroused so much opposition in the Soviet Union that he declined the honour.

Question: Who is the protagonist in Crime and Punishment?

Answer: Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment (1866) has as its protagonist a young intellectual, Raskolnikov, willing to gamble on ideas.

Question: Who wrote Dead Souls and “The Overcoat,” which are considered the foundation of 19th-century Russian Realism?

Answer: Nikolay Gogol is the Ukrainian-born Russian humorist, dramatist, and novelist whose novel Myortvye dushi (Dead Souls) and whose short story “Shinel” (“The Overcoat”) are considered the foundation of the 19th-century tradition of Russian Realism.

Question: From which novel of Leo Tolstoy is the statement “All happy families resemble each other; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” taken?

Answer: Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (published in installments from 1875 to 1877) opens with the line “All happy families resemble each other; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Question: Who is considered the founder of modern Russian literature?

Answer: The poet, novelist, dramatist, and short-story writer Aleksandr Pushkin has often been considered his country’s greatest poet and the founder of modern Russian literature.