Match List – I with List – II and select the correct answer using the code given below the lists. List – I (Pulitzer award categories) A. Fiction B. Music C. Biography D. Drama List – II (Awardee in 2025) 1. Jason Roberts 2. Branden Jacobs Jenkins 3. Susie Ibarra 4. Percival Everett Code :
- (a)A-3, B-4, C-2, D-1
- (b)A-4, B-3, C-2, D-1
- (c)A-4, B-3, C-1, D-2
- (d)A-3, B-4, C-1, D-2
Correct — C, A-4, B-3, C-1, D-2. The 2025 Pulitzer Prizes were announced on 5 May 2025, so they were the current set when this paper was sat on 12 October 2025. Taking the four categories in the order the list gives them: Fiction (A) went to Percival Everett for James (4), his retelling of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of the enslaved man Jim, a novel that had already taken the National Book Award for Fiction in 2024. Music (B) went to the percussionist and composer Susie Ibarra for Sky Islands (3). Biography (C) went to Jason Roberts for Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life (1), his double portrait of Linnaeus and Buffon and their rival attempts to catalogue the whole of nature. Drama (D) went to Branden Jacobs-Jenkins for Purpose (2). That gives A-4, B-3, C-1, D-2, which is option (c). Notice how the item is built: it is really two independent binary choices rather than one four-way puzzle. Either Everett is the novelist and Ibarra the composer, or they are swapped; and either Roberts is the biographer and Jacobs-Jenkins the dramatist, or they are swapped. Get both pairs the right way round and only one option survives.
- (a)A-3, B-4, C-2, D-1 — This option gets both halves wrong at once. It makes Susie Ibarra the fiction winner and Percival Everett the music winner, and it makes Branden Jacobs-Jenkins the biographer and Jason Roberts the dramatist — a complete double inversion. Everett is a novelist, whose James won Fiction; Ibarra is a composer and percussionist, and Sky Islands is a musical work. This is the option marked by a candidate who recognises the four names as 2025 Pulitzer winners but has attached none of them to a category.
- (b)A-4, B-3, C-2, D-1 — Half right, and therefore the most tempting wrong answer on the page. Fiction to Everett and Music to Ibarra are both correct, but the second half is inverted: this option gives Biography to Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and Drama to Jason Roberts, when it is the other way round. Jacobs-Jenkins is a playwright and Purpose is a play, which took the 2025 Drama prize; Jason Roberts is a non-fiction writer and Every Living Thing is a biography of two eighteenth-century naturalists. If the two literary names are the ones you are unsure about, the tell is the form of the work — a play cannot win Biography.
- (d)A-3, B-4, C-1, D-2 — The mirror image of the previous option. The second half is correct — Biography to Jason Roberts and Drama to Branden Jacobs-Jenkins — but the first half is inverted, putting Susie Ibarra in Fiction and Percival Everett in Music. Everett is one of the most widely discussed American novelists of the decade, the author of James and of Erasure, and he has never been a composer; Ibarra's Sky Islands is a musical composition, not a novel. Anchoring each name to the form of the work it produced settles this half immediately.
The Pulitzer Prizes were established under the will of Joseph Pulitzer, the Hungarian-born American newspaper publisher who owned the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the New York World, and have been awarded annually since 1917. They are administered by Columbia University in New York, which Pulitzer also endowed with its school of journalism. The prizes cover two broad domains: a large group of journalism categories, headed by the Public Service award that is given as a gold medal to a news organisation rather than to an individual, and a smaller group in letters, drama and music, which includes Fiction, Drama, History, Biography, Memoir or Autobiography, Poetry, General Nonfiction and Music. The winners are announced each spring, normally in early May.
Award questions are memory questions, but they are not memorised name by name. The efficient route is to tie each name to the form of the work, because the form fixes the category by itself — a novel can only take Fiction, a play can only take Drama, a musical composition can only take Music, and a life of a scientist can only take Biography. Once the forms are attached, a four-way match collapses into two coin-flips, and in this question the four options are laid out to punish getting either flip wrong: (b) has the literary pair inverted, (d) has the Fiction–Music pair inverted, and (a) has both inverted. Two further points are worth carrying. First, anchor the year: these are the 2025 awards, announced on 5 May 2025 and current at the time of this examination; a fresh set is announced every May, so always read the year named in the question rather than reaching for the most recent winners you happen to know. Second, a caution about sources. Typed reproductions of this paper circulate online in which these names are garbled and the fourth category is printed as Public Service rather than Drama. The commission's own answer-marked booklet is the ground truth, and it reads Fiction, Music, Biography and Drama.
- The 2025 Pulitzer Prizes were announced on 5 May 2025 — before the UPPSC prelims of 12 October 2025, which is why they count as current affairs for this paper
- Fiction 2025: Percival Everett for James, a retelling of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of the enslaved Jim; the same novel won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2024
- Music 2025: Susie Ibarra for Sky Islands; Biography 2025: Jason Roberts for Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life; Drama 2025: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins for Purpose
- The prizes were established by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, first awarded in 1917, and are administered by Columbia University, New York — not by any government or by the Commonwealth
- Since 2022 Biography and Memoir or Autobiography have been separate Pulitzer categories; the 2025 Memoir prize went to Tessa Hulls for Feeding Ghosts
- Other 2025 awards worth holding: History was a double award, to Edda L. Fields-Black for Combee and to Kathleen DuVal for Native Nations; General Nonfiction went to Benjamin Nathans; Poetry to Marie Howe; and the Public Service gold medal, a journalism category, to ProPublica
A-4, B-3, C-1, D-2 — option (c). The form of the work decides the category: a novel takes Fiction, a composition takes Music, a play takes Drama, and a life of two naturalists takes Biography.
- Recognising the names but not the categories. The four options are constructed so that knowing all four winners without knowing which category each took still leaves three wrong choices available
- Reaching for the most recent winners you know instead of the year the question names. These are the 2025 prizes, announced on 5 May 2025
- Confusing Biography with Memoir or Autobiography — separate Pulitzer categories since 2022, with different 2025 winners
- Trusting a typed reproduction of this paper over the commission's booklet; some circulating versions garble these names and print Public Service in place of Drama
Both examinations treat international awards as reliable current-affairs fodder, and UPPSC in particular returns to the Pulitzer year after year — it asked which newspaper won the 2021 Public Service prize, and here it moves up to a four-way category match. UPSC has historically preferred the institutional question: what field the Pulitzer belongs to, and who administers it. Between them, the safe preparation is to know both the machinery of the prize and the current year's winners by category.
The Pulitzer Prize is associated with which one of the following?
- (a) Environmental protection
- (b) Civil aviation
- (c) Journalism
- (d) Olympic Games
Answer(c) Journalism
Establishes what the Pulitzer is before the 2025 item asks who won it. UPSC's answer points at the prize's journalism core, and the present question shows the other half of the same award — the letters, drama and music categories in which Everett, Ibarra, Roberts and Jacobs-Jenkins were honoured. A candidate who thinks the Pulitzer is only a journalism award will be puzzled by a list of novelists and composers.
Consider the following statements: 1. Orange Prize is awarded to a work of published fiction in English by a woman. 2. Pulitzer Prize is awarded by the Commonwealth Foundation to a citizen of any Commonwealth country for any literary work in English. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
- (a) 1 only
- (b) 2 only
- (c) Both 1 and 2
- (d) Neither 1 nor 2
Answer(a) 1 only
Tests the administration of the Pulitzer, which is exactly the frame the present question sits inside. The second statement fails because the prize is Columbia University's and American, not the Commonwealth Foundation's — the same institutional fact that explains why the 2025 winners are American writers and composers rather than a Commonwealth field.
Which of the following newspapers won the 'Pulitzer Prize, 2021' in the prestigious public service category ?
- (a) The Wall Street Journal
- (b) The New York Times
- (c) The Washington Post
- (d) New York Post
Answer(b) The New York Times
The same commission on the same prize four years earlier, which is the clearest evidence that the Pulitzer is a standing UPPSC topic rather than a one-off. In 2021 it asked for a single journalism winner; in 2025 it raised the difficulty to a four-way match across the letters, drama and music categories. Anyone preparing UPPSC current affairs should treat each May's Pulitzer announcement as examinable.
The author of the Booker Prize Winner 2019 book "Girl, Women, Other" is
- (a) Margaret Atwood
- (b) Elif Shafak
- (c) Salman Rushdie
- (d) Bernadine Evaristo
Answer(d) Bernadine Evaristo
The same examination habit applied to the other great literary prize: name the year, name the book, and ask for the author. Pairing it with the present question shows what UPPSC actually wants from an award — the year, the category, the winner and the title of the work, held together rather than separately.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The Pulitzer Prizes are administered by
- (a)the Library of Congress, Washington
- (b)Columbia University, New York
- (c)the Swedish Academy, Stockholm
- (d)the Commonwealth Foundation, London
Answer(b) Columbia University, New York — the prizes were endowed by the will of the newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer and have been administered by Columbia, which he also endowed with its journalism school, since the first awards in 1917.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction was awarded to Percival Everett for which of the following novels ?
- (a)Purpose
- (b)Sky Islands
- (c)James
- (d)Every Living Thing
Answer(c) James — Everett's retelling of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from Jim's point of view. Purpose is Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's Drama winner, Sky Islands is Susie Ibarra's Music winner, and Every Living Thing is Jason Roberts's Biography winner.