Can You Name These Famous Short Stories Based on Their Descriptions?
Welcome to Lit Trivia, the Book Review’s multiple-choice quiz designed to test your knowledge of literature. This week’s installment asks you to identify the titles and authors of memorable short stories and novellas — based on a simple plot description. The answer section reveals a bit more about the work from articles in the Times archive. After the last question, you’ll find links to the novellas or story collections themselves if you’d like to read (or reread) them.
1 of 5
A lawyer with a busy office on Wall Street hires a promising staff member to help copy and proofread legal documents, but the new employee soon begins to reject requested tasks with the same reply: “I would prefer not to.”
2 of 5
In 1950s Harlem, an algebra teacher reflects upon his rocky relationship with his brother, a jazz musician who battled drug addiction on the way to recovery.
3 of 5
A girl listens to her mother’s instructions for living in a very short story that is composed in one continuous sentence of about 650 words.
4 of 5
During World War I, a Chinese agent named Yu Tsun — who is secretly working for imperial Germany and on the run from a British intelligence officer — stumbles into his ancestor’s literary-labyrinth project in which personal choices create different futures in multiple timelines.
5 of 5
A woman — who has recently lost her husband and two sons in a plane crash — narrates the personal experience of the event and her interactions with government social workers in reaction to the tragedy.