An AI Hoopoe named ‘Butt’ brings characters to a location of this name in one work, in which Khattam-Shud attempts to poison it. For 10 points each:
[10h] Name this location. A place of this name titles a compilation of tales in the Katha format compiled by Somadeva.
ANSWER: Sea of Stories [or Ocean of Stories or Ocean of the Streams of Stories or Ocean of Rivers of Stories; accept Haroun and the Sea of Stories or Kathasaritsagara]
[10e] Somadeva’s Kathasaritsagara provides the name for the title location of this author’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Another novel by this author follows a group of children born at the exact moment of India’s independence.
ANSWER: Salman Rushdie (The unnamed novel is Midnight’s Children.)
[10m] A variant spelling of this region is tied to “a sea of stories” in a poem by an author exiled from here, Agha Shahid Ali. In another Rushdie novel, this region is the home of a chauffeur-turned-assassin nicknamed “the clown.”
ANSWER: Kashmir [accept Jammu and Kashmir] (The unnamed novel is Shalimar the Clown.)
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