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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. In which of the following districts of Bombay does Rushdie report having lived?

2. With which of the following does Rushdie note Roth lived?

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

4. What is the name of the first cow to appear in Norse myth?

5. Which of the following does Rushdie use as a name for Chicago?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why is Rushdie grateful for the mixed reception of his first published novel?

2. What does Rushdie remark the phase “so it goes” is used to euphemize?

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

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

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

6. What was Rushdie’s last assignment as a student journalist?

7. Paraphrase Roth’s reported comment to Remnick about setting a novel in a therapist’s office?

8. What answer to the question of difficult reading does Rushdie propose?

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

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Section divisions, their titles, and chapter numbering / division schema are all components of paratext. That is, they are not part of the text but are associated with it closely and affect its meaning. What significance, if any, accrues to the chapter-numbering scheme at work in Languages of Truth? If there is significance, how does that significance manifest? If there is not, what in the anthology supports the paratextual divisions that are in place?

Essay Topic 2

In “Heraclitus,” Rushdie asserts “These are the four roots of the self: language, place, community, custom” (58). Does your experience bear out the assertion? How or how not?

Essay Topic 3

Assuming that Languages of Truth should be standard reading for a given class and level, what class and what level? Why that class and why that level? What in the text suggests as much, and how does it do so?

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