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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does litost mean?
(a) The least weight of all.
(b) A state of torment created by the sudden sight of one's own misery.
(c) A toast to misery.
(d) A toast to life.

2. What does Kristyna ask the student to get her?
(a) Two more books by Kant.
(b) A new writing tablet.
(c) An inscription written by the poet they call Goethe in her book.
(d) A book on philosophy.

3. What finally happens to Tamina?
(a) She drowns.
(b) She becomes the oldest of the elderly woman there.
(c) She is hung by the children who keep losing to her team.
(d) She dies in her sleep naturally.

4. What is the man's name who drives off with Tamina in a red sports car?
(a) Raphael.
(b) Randolph.
(c) Gabriel.
(d) Robert.

5. What is the island like where Tamina and the boy are at?
(a) It is deserted.
(b) It is full of children.
(c) It is full of strange animals.
(d) It is full of lush vegetation and has a few elderly women.

6. What turns off the student about Kristyna when she arrives?
(a) Her loud voice.
(b) Her provincial appearance.
(c) Her obvious hero worship of him.
(d) Nothing; he is delighted with her.

7. What language is the word litost?
(a) German.
(b) Czech.
(c) Russian.
(d) Polish.

8. How do the children on Tamina's team reward her?
(a) They do not reward her.
(b) By raping her.
(c) By rowing her back to the mainland.
(d) By letting her have her own room.

9. How does the narrator describe Tamina?
(a) As a lost soul whose shape is set in the past.
(b) As on a raft looking back.
(c) As a empty husk.
(d) As a empty soul with no life.

10. What is graphomania?
(a) A way of writing in cuneiform.
(b) The way they illustrate comics.
(c) The need for the perfect pen.
(d) The obsessive drive to write a book.

11. What happens to Tamina after she sleeps with Hugo?
(a) She is silent permanently.
(b) She tells him to leave her home and never come back.
(c) She regains her voice and words.
(d) She cries.

12. What does Tamina find within herself?
(a) A treasured silence.
(b) A tendency to wander mentally.
(c) Anger like she has never known.
(d) Resilience.

13. Who is Kristyna?
(a) A friend of the author's.
(b) An elderly babushka.
(c) A nun who teachers Kundera.
(d) A 30-year-old woman who is married to a butcher.

14. To what does the student manipulate Kristyna into agreeing?
(a) To return that same day back to her home.
(b) To his going to the Writer's Club meeting.
(c) To getting her own motel room.
(d) To go to bed with him.

15. Who is Tamina?
(a) She is a secondary character and a cousin to Kundera.
(b) We are never told anything about her.
(c) She is Kundera's second wife.
(d) She is one of the two or three fictionalized characters that Kundera assumes are born every second on earth.

Short Answer Questions

1. Where is the boat with the boy who rows?

2. Where is Bibi going for the summer?

3. When Kristyna arrives, where is the student?

4. What does Tamina do one day?

5. What is the only picture Tamina has of her husband?

(see the answer keys)

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