Fictional Island

Taprobane, Serendib, Ceylon, Sri Lanka: Whatever the era, whatever the name, the island has been the setting for a surprising number of works of fiction in English by authors home-grown (Yasmine Gooneratne, Shyam Selvadurai) and otherwise (Piers Anthony, Peter Adamson), well-known (Dennis Wheatley, Arthur C. Clarke) and obscure (“Q”, Maggi Lidchi). For some novelists the island has provided merely characters or story elements (Charles Dickens, Jules Verne).

One author (James Joyce) used just a single expressive word associated with the name “Serendib”. Notwithstanding the differences between these diverse writings, they all contribute to the rich fabric of fictional versions of the island, which in many instances are not so far removed from the real thing. So I had the idea of devising a quiz based on this corpus - and here it is.

1. Which Dennis Wheatley novel is set in Ceylon?
2. Who wrote the tea plantation novel Elephant Walk (1948)?
3. Which novel by Yasmine Gooneratne is set in Sri Lanka and Australia?
4. In which of Jules Verne’s novels is a pearl diver rescued from a shark attack in the Gulf of Mannar?
5. Which unfinished novel by Charles Dickens features the twins Neville and Helena Landless from Ceylon?
6. What is the name of the novel about rural Ceylon by Leonard Woolf?
7. Who wrote the novel Colombo (1995)?
8. Which fantasy novel by Piers Anthony has “Serendib” as a setting?
9. Which novel by a Sri Lankan-born writer won the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for the Best First Published Book (Eurasia?)
10. Who wrote the first novel in English set in Ceylon?
11. Which novel is partly set at Trincomalee during World War Two?
12.Which novel by a Sri Lankan-born writer was short-listed for the Booker Prize?
13. What is the name of the novel by Peter Adamson set in Sri Lanka?
14. What is the name of Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s science fiction novel set in “Taprobane”?
15. Which hero of the The 1001 Arabian Nights underwent adventures in “Serendib” during his sixth and seventh voyages?
16. Who wrote the World War Two novel Colombo Heat?
17. What is the name of the Victorian novel by “Q” (Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch) partly set at Sri Pada (Adam’s Peak)?
18. Which Post-Modernist novelist wrote: “You don’t reach Serendib by plotting a course for it. You have to set out in good faith and lose your bearings serendipitously.”
19. Who wrote an international best selling quartet of novels based on the island’s early history?
20. Which character from a children’s comic strip book had Colombo on his itinerary but was diverted by an adventure in Egypt?
21. What is the name of the novel by Maggi Lidchi set at Sigiriya and featuring a swami?
22. Who wrote the children’s novels The Twins in Ceylon (1909) and More about the Twins in Ceylon (1911)?
23. From which tale did Horace Walpole coin the word “serendipity”?
24. In which novel did James Joyce write: “These Cinghalese lobbing around in the sun, in dolce far niente. Not doing a hand’s turn all day. Sleep six months out of 12.”
25. What is the name of the novel by Shyam Selvadurai that concerns an upmarket Colombo district?

1. Dangerous Inheritance (1965)
2. Robert Standish
3. A Change of Skies (1991)
4. Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea (1869)
5. The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870)
6. The Village in the Jungle (1913)
7. Carl Muller
8. Hasan (1977)
9. When Memory Dies (1997) by A. Sivanandan
10.William Knighton, Forest Life in Ceylon (1854)
11. Coming Home (1995) by Rosamunde Pilcher
12. Reef (1994) by Romesh Gunasekera
13. Facing out to Sea (1997)
14. Fountains of Paradise (1978)
15. Sindbad
16. Christopher Hudson
17. Dead Man’s Rock (1887)
18. John Barth, The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor (1991)
19. Colin de Silva: The Winds of Sinhala, The Founts of Sinhala, The Fires of Sinhala and The Last Sinhala Lions
20.Tin-Tin in Herge’s Cigars of the Pharaohs (1958)
21. Earthman (1970)
22. Bella Woolf
23.The Three Princes of Serendip (1557)
24. Ulysses (1922)
25. Cinnamon Gardens (1998)