1. Every day is pretty bad for the characters in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. Which one of these is NOT one of their strategies for passing the empty, pointless hours?

   1. “We could hang ourselves.”

   2. “We wait till we can get up. Then we go on.”

   3. “We'll hang ourselves tomorrow. Unless Godot comes.”

   4. “I can't go on, I'll go on”

2. Complete the line. “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams …

   1. “ … he felt an unfamiliar, ticklish sensation in his legs”

   2. “ … he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect”

   3. “ … he looked around his room"

   4. “ … he found that his yellowish complexion had turned blue”

3. The many bad days in Tess only get worse. But what happens to Tess Durbeyfield in the small hours of one its first, that leaves her feeling obliged to “claim kin” with the D'Urbevilles?

   1. The Durbeyfields' horse is killed on the road to market with Tess at the reins, and she feels responsible

   2. Her tired and emotional father tells her “I bain't never touch a drop of tipple again, however pretty, if you do this”

   3. News arrives that the pasture that's been keeping the Durbeyfields going through the Long Depression is to be “enclosed”

   4. The prime minister appears on a hustings in Marlott to proclaim that poor peasantry must relocate the central workhouse “to build a Big Wessex Society”

4. Which novel's story of a single day depicts Septimus Warren Smith, a shell-shocked first world war veteran who ends up committing suicide

   1. Living by Henry Green

   2. Futility by William Gerhardie

   3. Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

   4. Put Out More Flags by Evelyn Waugh

5. Which of the following impediments does Don DeLillo NOT put in the way of the high finance hero of his day-long novel Cosmopolis while he is trying to get across New York, in his stretch limousine, for a haircut?

   1. A violent demonstration against global capitalism

   2. A Spencer Tunick-style location shoot where hundreds of naked volunteers are blocking the street

   3. The funeral parade, complete with revolving dervishes, of Sufi rap superstar Brutha Fez

   4. A jam of gigantic outside broadcast vans and reporters, in town to watch the new president advertising his green credentials by cycling down Fifth Avenue

6. Which novel uses the story of one day in the life of an already tortured teenager to depict the struggles of America's Great Migration of African-Americans from the south to the north?

   1. Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin

   2. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

   3. Jazz by Toni Morrison

   4. Forrest Gump by Winston Groom

7. Tommy Wilhelm is the protagonist of another novel set on a single, difficult day. Tommy's misfortunes include having lost his wife, his children, all his money, and his father's respect. And the woman who might help him is on the brink of cutting her losses. Which book?

   1. Rebbit Redux by John Updike

   2. Seize the Day by Saul Bellow

   3. The Information by Martin Amis

   4. A Matter of Honour by Jeffrey Archer

8. Another tough day is the subject of a novel depicting a middle-aged gay man in 1960s California. His lover has died and he is alienated from his conventional suburban neighbours. Name the book

   1. A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood

   2. The Beautiful Room is Empty by Edmund White

   3. The Runaway Soul by Harold Brodky

   4. The Wimbledon Poisoner by Nigel Williams

9. In Ian McEwan's Saturday, a neurosurgeon's day is ruined by an angry car driver suffering from the early stages of Huntingdon's Disease. But what is the doctor's name?

   1. Dr Douglas Ross

   2. Dr Henry Perowne

   3. Dr Lawrence Bingham

   4. Dr David Owen

10. What is the last line of Solzhynitzn's harrowing Gulag novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich?

    1. “So long as it meant change of some sort, he didn't care”

    2. “He'd had many strokes of luck that day”

    3. “What will guide me in the hours ahead, and perhaps longer than the hours ahead, will be the national interest”

    4. “At least things can only get better”

Solutions

1:D, 2:B, 3:A, 4:C, 5:D, 6:A, 7:B, 8:A, 9:B, 10:B

Scores

1. 3 and above.

   Less than 30%? Go back and prepare for third party irrelevancy.

2. 5 and above.

   Wait a minute - that's the phone ringing. Is that the sound of a "big offer" coming in?

3. 8 and above.

   Her majesty is waiting, and invites you to proceed with the legislative programme of your choice