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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. From which of the following does Rushdie note borrowing?
(a) Brihat Katha.
(b) Artha Shastra.
(c) Katha Sarit Sagara.
(d) Mudra Raksasha.

2. What is the name of the first cow to appear in Norse myth?
(a) Audumla.
(b) Buri.
(c) Ymir.
(d) Brunhild.

3. To which of the following does Rushdie compare Joseph Heller?
(a) Stan Laurel.
(b) Buster Keaton.
(c) Charlie Chaplin.
(d) Rudolph Valentino.

4. The phrase “sui generis” most nearly means which of the following?
(a) Original.
(b) Derivative.
(c) Engaging.
(d) Dull.

5. How many deaths does Rushdie attribute to Shahryar and Shah Zaman in total?
(a) 4,215.
(b) 3,214.
(c) 2,213.
(d) 1,212.

Short Answer Questions

1. Which of the following is attributed to Edward Bond?

2. As which of the following does Rushdie translate sophos?

3. Which of the following does Rushdie report is considered Roth’s best novel?

4. Which of the following comments that “The cruelest thing anyone can do with Portnoy’s Complaint is read it twice” (88)?

5. Which of the following does Rushdie report being among his father’s library?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why does Rushdie note that the Philip Roth Lecture he gives takes Roth as its topic?

2. What does Rushdie note was his first attraction to Thousand Nights and One Night?

3. Why does Rushdie note it took him so long to write his second published novel as it did?

4. What effect does Rushdie note of Romanian orphans having no access to stories?

5. What does Rushdie note struck him most on his first reading of Portnoy’s Complaint?

6. How does Rushdie define childhood in “Heraclitus” (57)?

7. Why does Rushdie note he initially resisted reading One Hundred Years of Solitude?

8. In what way does Rushdie contrast the animal fables of “the Eastern canon” with those represented by Aesop?

9. For what reason does Carlos Fuentes remark that Latin American writers hesitate to use the word “solitude”?

10. What, from context, does Rushdie mean by saying “English, I understood, could be chutnified” (91)?

(see the answer keys)

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