Books and Authors

Every old book in this chapter belongs to one of three families. Some are works of imagination (plays, poems, romances), some are works of knowledge (medicine, astronomy, grammar, music) and some are records written by kings' historians or by foreign visitors. When you meet a title in the exam, first ask 'which family?', and the author usually becomes easy to guess: a play is by Kalidasa, Bhasa, Shudraka, Vishakhadatta or Harsha; a medical text is by Charaka or Sushruta; a travel account is by a foreign visitor.

Classical Sanskrit literature. This is the most asked family. Read the table by author, not by title: remember each author's 'set' of works.

Science, medicine and music. These books are about subjects, so exams ask both 'who wrote it' and 'what is it about'. The pairs below are asked again and again.

South Indian classics. Tamil literature has the oldest surviving grammar and a rich epic tradition. Telugu and Kannada begin with court poets. A very common exam style is 'which of these is the oldest', so know that Tolkappiyam is the oldest surviving Tamil work.

Accounts of foreign visitors and court chroniclers. For history-based GK this table is gold, because it joins a book to a ruler and a time. Read each row as 'who came, whom did he visit, what did he write'.

Medieval poetry in Indian languages. Bhakti poets wrote in the people's language, which is why their books are still living songs. The big pairs: Tulsidas with the Ramcharitmanas (Awadhi, begun in 1574, in Akbar's age), Surdas with the Sursagar (Braj), Malik Muhammad Jayasi with the Padmavat (Awadhi, Sufi allegory), Chand Bardai with the Prithviraj Raso (about Prithviraj Chauhan) and Kabir with the Bijak (collected by his followers).

Modern Indian literature began when the printing press arrived and writers started speaking to the common reader instead of the king. Bengal led the way (Bankim, Tagore), Hindi followed (Bharatendu, Premchand, the Chhayavad poets) and every language found its own voices. For the exam you do not need to read these books; you need to hold three things together: author, book and (sometimes) the award or the idea behind it.

Hindi literature. Hindi questions come from three groups: the Chhayavad poets, Premchand and the novelists, and the partition and post-independence writers.

Bengali literature and Rabindranath Tagore. Bengal gave India its first modern novels and its first Nobel Prize in Literature. Tagore (1861-1941) won the Nobel Prize in 1913 for Gitanjali (Song Offerings), the first non-European to win it. He wrote the national anthem Jana Gana Mana and Bangladesh's anthem Amar Sonar Bangla, and founded Santiniketan, which later became Visva-Bharati.

Other Indian languages. Here are the pairs that appear in lists of 'Language – writer – work'. The Jnanpith Award, started in 1965 for work in any of the languages of the Eighth Schedule or in English, is the most prestigious Indian literary award; the first winner was the Malayalam poet G. Sankara Kurup (for Odakkuzhal).

Books written by the leaders of the freedom movement are exam favourites because they join literature with history. Many of them were written inside a prison cell, which makes them easy to remember through a story: a leader is locked away, and the idle hours turn into a book. Learn the table first, then the 'jail books' card.

Books by and on modern politicians and public figures. Newer exams (2024-25) increasingly ask this group because they follow the news: a political memoir, a biography or a book launched by a leader. Tie each book to its author.

Indian writing in English is a small but heavily tested area, because the questions are easy to frame: 'Who wrote X?', 'Which book won the Booker?', 'Which author is NOT correct?'. The trick is to learn author first, then the three or four books that define the author, and to attach the prizes to the right person and year.

The pioneers (1930s-60s). Three writers are called the 'Big Three' of early Indian English fiction: Mulk Raj Anand, R.K. Narayan and Raja Rao.

The post-1980 generation. After Rushdie's Midnight's Children (1981), Indian writing in English became a global name. This group provides most of today's questions.

Autobiographies of sportspersons, scientists and film personalities are the favourites of newer SSC papers, because the examiner can link them to the news. The easiest way to remember them is to notice that the title often hints at the person's life: a sprinter's book is about speed, a boxer's about greatness, a tennis player's about the 'Open'.

Indian sportspersons.

Sports legends from abroad.

Scientists, economists and business leaders.

Film personalities and columnists.

Foreign classics appear in the exam in only a few shapes, and almost all of them are about the same names. Do not try to read or remember all of world literature. Learn the famous writer-book pairs in the tables below, add the Nobel Prize list and the big political-philosophy books, and you will cover nearly everything the commissions have asked.

Writers of the English language.

American and European classics.

Non-fiction that changed the world. These are asked as 'Who wrote X?' with options from politics and economics.

The Nobel Prize for Literature. It is given by the Swedish Academy for a writer's whole body of work. For India, the key name is Tagore (1913); for the world, the recent winners are asked again and again.