Below you will find important information for the Arts & Literature type of GK/Current Affairs questions. Remember, this list is NOT exhaustive! It will cover all the fundamentals you should know, but there is no limit to what should be studied in GK & Current Affairs.
Jnanpith and Sahitya Akademi Awards
- The Jnanpith Award(also spelled as Gyanpeeth Award) is a literary award in India.
- Along with the Sahitya Akademi Award,it is one of the two most prestigious literary honours in the country.
- Any Indian citizen who writes in any of the 22 languages in Schedule 8 (of the Indian constitution) language is eligible for the honour.
- 2014 Jnanpith Award – Balchander Nemade for “Hindu: Jagnyachi Samrudhha Adgal” in Marathi
- Sahitya Akademi, India’s National Academy of Letters, annually confers on writers of the most outstanding books of literary merit published in any of the major Indian languages recognised by the Sahitya Akademi.
- Awardees for 2014:
- Famous poets Javed Akhtar (Urdu), Subodh Sarkar (Bengali) and Ambika Dutt (Rajasthani)
- Novelists Mridula Garg (Hindi), Manmohan (Punjabi) and R.N. Joe D’ Cruz (Tamil)
Important books and their authors
| Book’s Name | Author’s Name |
| A Gift of Monotheists | Ram Mohan Roy |
| Adventures of Sherlock Homes | Arther Canon Doel |
| All the Prime Minister’s Men | Janardan Thakur |
| An Unknown Indian | Nirad C. Choudhary |
| Anand Math | Bankim Chandra Chattopadhaye |
| Anna Karenina | Leo Tolstoy |
| Apple Cart | G. B. Shaw |
| Astyadhaye | Panini |
| A Pair of Blue Eyes | Thomas Hardy |
| A Passage to India | E. M. Foster |
| A Suitable Boy | Bikram Seth |
| A Tale of Two Cities | Charles Dickens |
| Bicramanchadev | Bilhon |
| Blind Beauty | Boris Pasternak |
| Buddhacharit | Asvaghosh |
| Comedy Errors | Shakespeare |
| Circle of Reason | Amitava Ghosh |
| Crisis of India | Ronal Segal |
| Coolie | Mulkraj Anand |
| Das Capital | Karl Marx |
| Devi Chaudharani | Bankim Chandra Chattopadhaye |
| Divine Comedy | Dante |
| Divine Life | Sivanand |
| Economic History of India | Ramesh Chandra Dutta |
| Freedom at Midnight | Lapierre & Collins |
| Friend Not Master | Ayub Khan |
| Gathering Strom | Churchill |
| Ghulamgiri | Jyotiba Phule |
| Hero of Nymph | Aurobindo Ghosh |
| Hind Swaraj | M. K. Gandhi |
| Hindu View of Life | S. Radhakrishnan |
| I follow the Mahatma | K. M. Munshi |
| India Divided | Rajendra Prashad |
| India Wins Freedom | Abdul Kalam Azad |
| Indian war and Independence | D. V. Savarkar |
| Indica | Megasthenes |
| Inheritance of Loss | Kiran Desai |
| Jungle Book | R. Kippling |
| Kidnapped | Stevenson |
| Kubla Khan | Coleridge |
| Mahabhashya | Patanjali |
| Man and Superman | G. B. Shaw |
| Midnight Children | Salman Rushdi |
| Mother | Maxim Gorkay |
| My Experiments With Truth | M.K. Gandhi |
| Myth of Independence | Zulfikar Ali Bhutto |
| Neel Darpan | Dinbandhu Mitra |
| Netaji Dead or Alive | Samar Guha |
| New Dimensions of India’s Foreign Policy | A. B. Vajpayee |
| New India | Annie Besant |
| Pakhtoon | Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan |
| Paradise Lost | John Milton |
| Pather Panchali | Bibhuti BHushan Bandopadhaye |
| Poverty & Un-British Rule in India | Dadabhai Naoroji |
| Rajtarangini | Kalhan |
| Ramcharit | S. K. Nandi |
| Saket | Mathili Saran Gupta |
| Satyarth Prakash | Swami Dayanand |
| Straight from the Heart | Kapil Dev |
| Tahakak – E – Hind | Albiruni |
| Talisman | Walter Scott |
| The Bandit Queen | Mala Sen |
| The City of Joy | Dominic Lapier |
| The Discovery of India | Jawahar Lal Nehru |
| The God of Small Things | Arundhuti Roy |
| The Harry Potter Series | J. K. Rowling |
| The Indian Struggle | Subash Chandra Bose |
| The Indian War of Independence | V. D. Savarkar |
| The Prince | Machiavelli |
| The Satanic Verse | Salman Rushdi |
| The Spirit of Islam | Syed Amir Ali |
| The White Tiger | Aravind Adiga |
| Theory of Relativity | Einstein |
| Three Musketeers | Alexander Duma |
| Two Leaves and a Bud | Mulkraj Anand |
| Unhappy India | L. Roy |
| Utopia | Thomas Moor |
| Volga Se Ganga | Rahul Sankritayan |
| War and Peace | Tolstoy |
| What Congress and Gandhi have done to the untouchables | B. R. Ambedkar |
Important Autobiographies
APJ Abdul Kalam – Wings of Fire
Adolf Hitler – Mein Kampf
Albert Einstein – Autobiographical Notes
Anne Frank – Diary Of A Young Girl
Bill Clinton – My Life
Barack Obama – Dreams From My Father
Dalai Lama – Freedom in Exile
Jawahar Lal Nehru – An Autobiography
Leo Tolstoy – My Confession
Marilyn Monroe – My Story
Mahatma Gandhi – The Story Of My Experiments With Truth
Martin Luther King Jr. – The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr
Nelson Mandela – A Long Walk To Freedom
Usain Bolt – Faster Than Lightning
Important Books by APJ Abdul Kalam
India 2020 – 1998
Wings of Fire – 1999 (Autobiography)
Ignited Minds- 2002
The Luminous Sparks – 2004
Mission India – 2005
Inspiring Thoughts – 2007
Target 3 Billion (with Srijan Pal Singh) – 2011
Turning Point – 2012
My Journey – 2013
A Manifesto for Change – 2014
Works of Kalidas
Important plays-
1. Malavikagnimitra
2. Abhijnanasakuntalam
3. Vikramorvasiya
Epic poems-
1. Raghuvamsa
2. Kumarasambhava
Lyrical poems are-
1. Meghaduta or Meghasandesa
2. Ritusamhara