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

Short Answer Questions

1. The comment about “the disgusting social and military project that would come to bloom in Syria and Iraq like toxic desert dogbane” (77) offers an example of which of the following?

2. What admonition does Moroni offer the narrator in her letter to him following the 11 September 2001 attacks (xvi)?

3. In what year does Fatima die?

4. Which of the following refers to Moroni as “the finest mind of her generation” (xiii)?

5. In which city does Sikander secure a position after first coming to the United States?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

4. What does the narrator report valuing in Whitman when he read him initially (xvii)?

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

6. To what causes does the narrator ascribe the British decision to afford India and Pakistan independence?

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

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. In what does the narrator report having seen the good in the United States during his youth?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Consider the comment that “America had begun as a colony and that a colony it remained, that is, a place still defined by its plunder, where enrichment was paramount and civil order always an afterthought” (xiii). Is the definition of “colony” presented in the comment accurate? What in the novel and in experience indicates that it is / not? How does it do so?

Essay Topic 2

Explicate the following simile: “Like his debt load, Trump’s waistline ballooned” (3).

Essay Topic 3

Rind makes the comment that “Friendship’s great. But it never made anyone a billionaire” (127). What does it reveal about the character’s attitude? How does it do so? Does the novel endorse that attitude? How does it do so or fail to do so?

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