View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. In what year did Muzzammil immigrate to the San Diego area?

2. In what month does Latif die?

3. Which of the following invitations to speak about his play does the narrator report refusing?

4. The term “zakat” refers to which of the following in the novel?

5. In what year does the narrator report starting to write the book?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

3. How does Asma define the Nero complex?

4. Why does Sikander rail against Naseem after he and the narrator leave Abbottabad?

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

6. What form does Latif’s bent towards charitable work take throughout his medical career?

7. What does Fatima expect will be Anjum’s fate, and what actually does happen to Anjum?

8. What message does the narrator note is sent by the United States turning against Afghanistan and Iraq in the late 1980s and early 1990s?

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

10. What reasons does the narrator give for his mother not watching the news?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

While conversing with the narrator, a Pennsylvania state trooper remarks that “when [one of the leaders of the 11 September 2001 attacks] returned his rental car on September ninth, he called the rental agency to tell them the oil light was on. Can you believe that? He didn’t care about the three thousand people they killed, but he cared about the next person driving the car” (93). What accounts for the disjunction? What in the book and in experience tells you that it does? How does it do so?

Essay Topic 2

Rind quotes Norbert Elias as remarking that “The established majority takes its we-image from a minority of its best, and shapes a they-image of the despised outsiders from a minority of their worst” (139). Does the novel agree with the sentiment? What in the text asserts that it does or does not? How does it do so?

Essay Topic 3

Consider the quote from Montaigne’s “Of Experience” the narrator presents: “I take it for true that dreams are honest reflections of our inclinations; but there is art to making sense of them” (104). What is meant by the quote? What from the narrator indicates that meaning? How does it do so?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 790 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample