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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. The term “zakat” refers to which of the following in the novel?
(a) Money to be invested in stocks.
(b) Money to be given to the state.
(c) Money to be put into savings.
(d) Money to be distributed to the poor.

2. Which of the following is among the books Asma gives the narrator?
(a) Year Five of the Algerian Revolution.
(b) Black Skin, White Masks.
(c) The Wretched of the Earth.
(d) A Dying Colonialism.

3. Which writer does the narrator remark “would not be surprised” at the ascent of Trump (23)?
(a) Hugo.
(b) Dumas.
(c) De Tocqueville.
(d) De Sade.

4. The comment that “The Prophet’s Safiya was supposedly a very beautiful woman, which is not exactly what I would have said of the Safiya I knew, at least not before saying other things about her” (55) offers an example of which of the following?
(a) Hyperbole.
(b) Metonymy.
(c) Litotes.
(d) Simile.

5. In what year does Sikander last meet Trump?
(a) 1997.
(b) 1991.
(c) 1993.
(d) 1995.

Short Answer Questions

1. The comment that “Abbottabad is a military town, a kind of Pakistani West Point” (69) offers an example of which of the following?

2. Rooh Afza lassi is which of the following?

3. The term “paaya” refers to which of the following?

4. The comment that “he felt something strange in his chest, like a pounding on a distant drum” (7) offers an example of which of the following?

5. In the comments “Sure, fine, yes, they had perpetrated evil and enslavement in their endless plunder of the Indian motherland since the early 1600s—but so what? Were we robots? Did we have to keep repeating the violence” (28), the pronoun “we” refers to which of the following?

Short Essay Questions

1. What reasons does the narrator give for wanting to avoid a detailed account of his father’s infatuation with Trump?

2. How does Asma define the Nero complex?

3. What does the narrator come to learn is the intent behind questions about whether his play is autobiographical?

4. Aside from medical appointments, what contact does Sikander have with Trump?

5. With what events listed in the novel’s chronology is Trump involved?

6. What reasons does Asma give for disliking The Satanic Verses?

7. What reasons does the narrator give for surprise at Sikander soliciting prostitution?

8. What conspiracies does the narrator note hearing voiced while visiting family in Abbottabad in 2008?

9. What writerly insight does the narrator report having had regarding the 2016 presidential election?

10. What does Sikander comment to Latif that he cannot do in Pakistan that he can do in the United States, and why does he say he cannot do it there?

(see the answer keys)

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