1. Who didn't publish a sequel this year?

   1. Rose Tremain

   2. Andrew Motion

   3. Irvine Welsh

   4. Alan Garner

2. Which fictional detective came out of retirement in November?

   1. DI Rebus

   2. Commander Adam Dalgliesh

   3. Inspector Wexford

   4. Inspector Morse

3. Which of these is not a genuine title?

   1. Fifty Shades of Fiscal Policy

   2. Fifty Shades of Chicken

   3. Fifty Sheds of Grey

   4. Fifty Shades of Feminism

4. Who co-wrote a serial novel about zombies?

   1. Margaret Atwood

   2. China Miéville

   3. Neil Gaiman

   4. Ursula K Le Guin

5. Which love affair is the subject of this year's Orange prizewinner?

   1. Odysseus and Penelope

   2. Achilles and Patroclus

   3. Paris and Helen

   4. Mark Antony and Cleopatra

6. Which of these is not a quote from Martin Amis's Lionel Asbo?

   1. "The sky was a cold iron-grey, like the underside of a shield."

   2. "Who let the dogs in? Who? Who?"

   3. "'The main role of the semicolon,' he read in his Concise Oxford Dictionary, 'is to mark a grammatical separation that is stronger in effect than a comma but less strong than a full stop.'"

   4. "Dawn simmered over the incredible edifice – the stacked immensity of Avalon Tower."

7. Which comedian confirmed his reputation as a children's author?

   1. Frankie Boyle

   2. David Walliams

   3. Dara O'Briain

   4. Stewart Lee

8. Which writer who died in 2012 … surprisingly never learned to drive?

   1. Ray Bradbury

   2. Gore Vidal

   3. Adrienne Rich

   4. Nina Bawden

9. Which writer who died in 2012 … took revenge by depicting an ex-husband or ex-lover in a novel as so promiscuous they were "capable of having sex with a venetian blind"?

   1. Helen Gurley Brown

   2. Maeve Binchy

   3. Nora Ephron

   4. Gore Vidal

10. Which writer who died in 2012 … was born in Africa and had a second life as a jazz critic called Francis Newton?

    1. Barry Unsworth

    2. Maurice Sendak

    3. Eric Hobsbawm

    4. Gore Vidal

11. Victoria Beckham has a tattoo taken from …?

    1. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

    2. Tennessee Williams

    3. The Song of Solomon

    4. King Lear

12. Whose belatedly published poetry included the cheery line "And every winter things get worse"?

    1. Kingsley Amis

    2. John Fowles

    3. William Golding

    4. Evelyn Waugh

13. Whose book was written in the voice of their real-life spouse?

    1. Philip Hensher

    2. Lionel Shriver

    3. Dave Eggers

    4. Rachel Cusk

14. What percentage of authors on this year's Man Booker prize shortlist were self-confessed former heroin users?

    1. 0%

    2. 33.33%

    3. 50%

    4. 66.66%

15. "The village seems strange; this is separation as if my beloved has left it. / The grief of separation is so cruel that it is not scared of anyone" comes from an anthology of poetry from which armed nationalist movement?

    1. Zapatista Army of National Liberation

    2. Tamil Tigers

    3. The Taliban

    4. Basque separatists ETA

16. Joseph Anton, the codename that Salman Rushdie adopted while he was in hiding, and the title of his memoir, is taken from ...?

    1. A short story by Chekhov

    2. A combination of Conrad and Chekhov

    3. The names of two secret agents who guarded him

    4. Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent

17. "A severed head fell from its spike, splashed" – this line is taken from ...?

    1. Death of Kings by Bernard Cornwell

    2. Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

    3. "The Thames, London 2012" by Carol Ann Duffy

    4. Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel

18. Which author called Twitter "the ultimate irresponsible medium"?

    1. JK Rowling

    2. Martin Amis

    3. Neil Gaiman

    4. Jonathan Franzen

19. Which poet and editor makes a cameo appearance in Ian McEwan's Sweet Tooth?

    1. Ian Hamilton

    2. Don Paterson

    3. TS Eliot

    4. Craig Raine

20. Where might you find anatomically-shaped pasta?

    1. Back to Blood by Tom Wolfe

    2. Vagina by Naomi Wolf

    3. Nigellissima by Nigella Lawson

    4. Fifty Shades Freed by EL James

21. What highly praised non-fiction book this year contained this line: "I slept that night in a Neolithic dormitory on a seabed of chalk"?

    1. Sightlines by Kathleen Jamie

    2. The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane

    3. Walking Home by Simon Armitage

    4. Strands by Jean Sprackland

Solutions

1:C, 2:A, 3:A, 4:A, 5:B, 6:A, 7:B, 8:A, 9:C, 10:C, 11:C, 12:B, 13:A, 14:B, 15:C, 16:B, 17:C, 18:D, 19:A, 20:B, 21:B

Scores

1. 5 and above.

   Perhaps it was a year to forget, after all.

2. 10 and above.

   Would you like to try again, for auld lang syne?

3. 15 and above.

   Not bad at all – stay tuned for 2013.

4. 21 and above.

   Oh well done. Have you considered a career in literary journalism?