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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

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

2. Where do Kristyna and a student she meets agree to reunite?
(a) In Budapest.
(b) At his apartment in the city.
(c) In Poland.
(d) In Prague.

3. Who are two people Kundera blurs the historic moments of?
(a) Clementis and Gottwald.
(b) Mirek and Zdena.
(c) Kundera and Clementis.
(d) Kafta and Mirek.

4. What is the phrase Kundera's father says to everything after he loses his memory?
(a) That's great.
(b) Strange that it is true.
(c) That's strange.
(d) Stranger things have happened.

5. 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.

Short Answer Questions

1. What do Kristyna and the student decide?

2. What does the man who orders a coke ask Tamina?

3. Where does Tamina work?

4. How is Tamina's apartment?

5. How is the student recognized?

Short Essay Questions

1. Explain who Tamina is and the significance of how Kundera describes her.

2. Who does Kristyna meet and what attracts her to this person?

3. What character's life is again addressed in part 6 and how is her life dismissed in a sense?

4. How is Tamina's eventual suicide symbolic?

5. Why do you think Kundera blurs historical moments?

6. What does Tamina do shortly after her husband dies and what might this foreshadow?

7. Who is Kristyna?

8. What happens to permanently silence Tamina?

9. What does Tamina ask Bibi to get for her in Prague and why does Tamina make the request?

10. How is Kundera's father's attempt to understand Beethoven undertaken by Kundera?

(see the answer keys)

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