Subcategories
💡 Sample questions
1. Who is the author of Harry Potter?
2. Who wrote Romeo and Juliet?
3. Who is the author of The Little Prince?
From the classics on every reading list to today’s bestsellers — this category goes through the authors and books that shaped readers across centuries.
Why this category is worth playing
Remember plots, characters and authors with ease
Place writers within their periods and movements
Spot literary references in everyday culture
Build a reading list from genres you’ve overlooked
Settle the eternal book-club arguments
What to expect in Erudite
Coverage from classics to modern bestsellers
Questions on authors, plots and famous lines
Short rounds that fit between chapters
Helpful context with each answer
New books added regularly
A category as old as the printing press
Literature trivia has unusual depth because the source material spans millennia. The Epic of Gilgamesh predates Homer by centuries; Cervantes' Don Quixote, published in two parts in 1605 and 1615, is widely treated as the first modern novel; and Agatha Christie remains one of the best-selling fiction authors ever, with her play The Mousetrap running in London's West End since 1952. A literature quiz can leap from ancient epics to last year's Booker Prize winner in the space of three questions, and that range is exactly what keeps it interesting.
There's also a special pleasure in the near-miss: knowing a plot perfectly but blanking on the author, or recognising a famous opening line — "Call me Ishmael," "It was a truly dark and stormy night" — without being able to place the book. Those gaps are where trivia does its best teaching.
More than naming authors
Good book trivia questions go beyond matching titles to writers. They poke at pen names (Mary Ann Evans wrote as George Eliot), record-holders (the Harry Potter series has been translated into more than 80 languages), literary movements, unreliable narrators and the real places behind fictional ones. Playing trivia about books and literature is a sneaky way to build a reading list, too — every question you miss is a title you now have a reason to pick up.
Readers also tend to be quietly competitive about their shelves, and this category gives that instinct somewhere productive to go. Whether your home turf is Russian novels, fantasy sagas or contemporary poetry, the rounds will eventually wander onto it — and then promptly off it, into territory you'll be glad you visited.
What does the Books & Literature quiz in Erudite cover?
The Books & Literature quiz in Erudite features 500+ questions about stories, authors and the lines that stayed with you. Subtopics include bestsellers. Questions span several difficulty levels, and the category is free to play in the Erudite app for iOS and Android — 8K+ players have already picked it.
