Language & Literature · Unit 16

World Literature

Great writing from every continent

Literature in English is a small fraction of literature, and reading in translation is the normal condition for most of the world's great writing.

The unit covers European, Russian, Latin American, African and Asian literature.

This unit breaks down into 21 short steps and 123 questions, starting at difficulty 3 and building to 5. Below you can see exactly what it covers, how the path is structured, and worked examples with explanations.

Steps: 21
Questions: 123
Difficulty: 3-5

What this unit covers

European Literature
Latin American Literature
Russian Literature
African Literature
Asian Literature

Where this fits

Follows Classic Literature.

Where people slip

A translation is an interpretation. Different translations of the same work can differ enormously, and the translator's name is worth noticing.

How the unit is structured

World Literature runs as 21 short steps that unlock in order. 15 are practice rounds and 6 are challenge rounds that pull together everything before them. Questions start at difficulty 3 and climb to 5 as you progress.

Step 1 · easierStep 21 · harder

Challenge rounds

Example questions

30 real questions from this unit, with the answer and the reason behind it, grouped by what they practise. There are 123 in the unit altogether.

African Literature

Choose all that applyLevel 3
1. Which of these books were written by African authors? Pick all that apply.
- Things Fall Apartcorrect
- Half of a Yellow Suncorrect
- Petals of Bloodcorrect
- Crime and Punishment
The first three are African novels, while "Crime and Punishment" is Russian.
Fact or fibLevel 3
2. Chinua Achebe won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Answer: False
Achebe never won the Nobel, although he is one of the most celebrated writers of the twentieth century.
Build the sentenceLevel 4
3. Build a sentence describing the central character of Achebe's most famous novel.
Answer: Okonkwo is the tragic hero of Things Fall Apart
Okonkwo's pride and fear of weakness drive the tragedy of "Things Fall Apart".
Multiple choiceLevel 4
4. Who wrote "Things Fall Apart", the 1958 novel about the Igbo leader Okonkwo?
- Chinua Achebecorrect
- Wole Soyinka
- Ngugi wa Thiong'o
- Ben Okri
Chinua Achebe of Nigeria wrote it, and it is the most widely read African novel.
Fill the blankLevel 5
5. Achebe took the title "Things Fall Apart" from a line in a poem by the Irish poet W. B. ____.
- Yeatscorrect
- Blake
- Auden
- Eliot
The line comes from "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats.
Match the pairsLevel 5
6. Match each African writer to a work they wrote.
Answer: Chinua Achebe = Things Fall Apart; Ngugi wa Thiong'o = Weep Not, Child; Wole Soyinka = Death and the King's Horseman; Tsitsi Dangarembga = Nervous Conditions
These four books are landmarks of modern African writing.

Asian Literature

Choose all that applyLevel 3
7. Which of these writers were Japanese? Pick all that apply.
- Matsuo Bashocorrect
- Yasunari Kawabatacorrect
- Murasaki Shikibucorrect
- Lu Xun
Basho, Kawabata and Murasaki Shikibu were Japanese, while Lu Xun was Chinese.
Match the pairsLevel 3
8. Match each Asian writer to their work.
Answer: Lu Xun = The True Story of Ah Q; Yasunari Kawabata = Snow Country; Rabindranath Tagore = Gitanjali; Cao Xueqin = Dream of the Red Chamber
These works come from Japan, China and India and are all landmarks of Asian literature.
Multiple choiceLevel 3
9. Which classic Chinese novel follows the Monkey King Sun Wukong on a pilgrimage?
- Dream of the Red Chamber
- Journey to the Westcorrect
- Water Margin
- Romance of the Three Kingdoms
"Journey to the West", written in the 16th century, sends a monk and his companions to fetch Buddhist scriptures.
Fact or fibLevel 4
10. "The Tale of Genji" was written in Japan in the early 11th century.
Answer: True
True: it dates from around 1010, centuries before the European novel appeared.
Fill the blankLevel 4
11. Rabindranath Tagore, winner of the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature, wrote mainly in ____.
- Hindi
- Bengalicorrect
- Urdu
- Tamil
Tagore wrote in Bengali and translated many of his own poems into English.
Odd one outLevel 4
12. Which of these is NOT one of the classic Chinese novels?
- The Tale of Genjicorrect
- Water Margin
- Dream of the Red Chamber
- Romance of the Three Kingdoms
"The Tale of Genji" is Japanese; the other three are among China's four great classic novels.

European Literature

Build the sentenceLevel 3
13. Build a true sentence about a famous Spanish novel.
Answer: Cervantes wrote Don Quixote in Spanish
Cervantes wrote "Don Quixote" in Spanish in the early 1600s.
Fill the blankLevel 3
14. The Norwegian playwright who wrote "A Doll's House" was Henrik ____.
- Ibsencorrect
- Strindberg
- Hamsun
- Andersen
Henrik Ibsen is often called the father of modern drama.
Multiple choiceLevel 3
15. Who wrote the Spanish novel "Don Quixote"?
- Miguel de Cervantescorrect
- Victor Hugo
- Dante Alighieri
- Franz Kafka
Miguel de Cervantes published "Don Quixote" in Spain, and it is often called the first modern novel.
Fact or fibLevel 4
16. Dante Alighieri wrote "The Divine Comedy" in Italian rather than in Latin.
Answer: True
True: Dante chose the Tuscan dialect of Italian, which helped make it the basis of standard Italian.
Match the pairsLevel 4
17. Match each European author to a work they wrote.
Answer: Goethe = Faust; Gustave Flaubert = Madame Bovary; Henrik Ibsen = A Doll's House; Albert Camus = The Stranger
Each of these writers is best known for the work paired with them here.
Choose all that applyLevel 5
18. Which of these plays were written by Henrik Ibsen? Pick all that apply.
- Hedda Gablercorrect
- A Doll's Housecorrect
- Miss Julie
- The Seagull
"Miss Julie" is by Strindberg and "The Seagull" is by Chekhov.

Latin American Literature

Build the sentenceLevel 3
19. Build a sentence that defines magical realism.
Answer: Magical realism mixes fantastic events with ordinary life
In magical realism the strange is described as calmly as the ordinary.
Choose all that applyLevel 3
20. Which of these Latin American writers won the Nobel Prize in Literature? Pick all that apply.
- Gabriel Garcia Marquezcorrect
- Pablo Nerudacorrect
- Octavio Pazcorrect
- Jorge Luis Borges
Garcia Marquez, Neruda and Paz all won the Nobel, but Borges never did, which is one of the prize's famous omissions.
Fact or fibLevel 3
21. Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote his novels in Spanish.
Answer: True
He wrote in Spanish, and his books reached the world through translation.
Fill the blankLevel 4
22. The Chilean poet Pablo Neruda won the 1971 Nobel Prize in ____.
- Literaturecorrect
- Peace
- Physics
- Chemistry
Neruda was honoured for his poetry, including "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair".
Match the pairsLevel 4
23. Match each Latin American writer to their home country.
Answer: Gabriel Garcia Marquez = Colombia; Jorge Luis Borges = Argentina; Mario Vargas Llosa = Peru; Octavio Paz = Mexico
Latin American literature spans many nations, from Colombia and Argentina to Peru and Mexico.
Guess the numberLevel 5
24. In which year was "One Hundred Years of Solitude" first published?
Answer: 1967 year
It appeared in 1967 in Buenos Aires and made Garcia Marquez world famous.

Russian Literature

Fact or fibLevel 3
25. Anton Chekhov is famous both for his short stories and for his plays.
Answer: True
True: Chekhov wrote hundreds of short stories as well as major dramas such as "The Seagull".
Match the pairsLevel 3
26. Match each Russian author to their book.
Answer: Fyodor Dostoevsky = The Brothers Karamazov; Nikolai Gogol = Dead Souls; Ivan Turgenev = Fathers and Sons; Mikhail Bulgakov = The Master and Margarita
These four novels are classics of nineteenth century Russian fiction.
Fill the blankLevel 4
27. The guilt-haunted student Raskolnikov is the central character of Dostoevsky's novel "Crime and ____".
- Punishmentcorrect
- Confession
- Judgement
- Silence
Raskolnikov kills a pawnbroker and then lives out his punishment through conscience.
Guess the numberLevel 4
28. In which year was Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" first published?
Answer: 1866 year
It appeared in a Russian literary journal in 1866, the same decade as Tolstoy's "War and Peace".
Multiple choiceLevel 4
29. Which novel by Leo Tolstoy is set during Napoleon's invasion of Russia?
- War and Peacecorrect
- Anna Karenina
- Resurrection
- The Death of Ivan Ilyich
"War and Peace" follows Russian families through the Napoleonic wars of 1805 to 1812.
Odd one outLevel 4
30. Which of these novels was NOT written by Fyodor Dostoevsky?
- Dead Soulscorrect
- The Idiot
- Demons
- Notes from Underground
"Dead Souls" is by Nikolai Gogol; the other three are all Dostoevsky.

Where these questions come from. Each unit starts as a plan of the concepts it should cover and the difficulty it should span. Questions are written against that plan with AI assistance, then checked by a validator that rejects anything without a single defensible answer, an explanation, or plausible wrong options. How we write questions sets out the whole process, and corrections are fixed in the bank and reach the site and the app the same day.

How you practise

This unit mixes 14 different question formats, so you are recalling and applying rather than recognising the same layout every time.

Build the sentence
Choose all that apply
Fact or fib
Fill the blank
Guess the number
Match the pairs
Multiple choice
Odd one out
Picture question
Put in order
Sort into groups
Spell it
True or false
Type the answer

Practise World Literature

123 questions across 21 steps. Start with step one and crawl at your own pace.

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Read about World Literature

Explainers from our blog on what this unit covers. Each one ends with real questions from the bank.

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