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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. At which of the following universities did Rushdie study?

2. Of which of the following was Shah Zaman ruler?

3. In what translation does Rushdie note having first read One Hundred Years of Solitude?

4. Which of the following books does Rushdie reference?

5. Which of the following is Rushdie’s first published novel?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. What reason for enjoying Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” does Rushdie note?

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

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

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

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

7. What does Heraclitus’s fragment 121 say?

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

9. What lessons does Rushdie find in the story of Orpheus and Eurydice?

10. Why do the deaths of Cervantes and Shakespeare occur on the same date but not the same day?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Readerly attention focuses on the following passage: “I believe that the books and stories we fall in love with make us who we are, or, not to claim too much, that the act of falling in love with a book or story changes us in some way, and the beloved tale becomes a part of our picture of the world, a part of the way in which we understand things and make judgements and choices in our daily lives” (3). Does the passage bear out? What in the anthology and in your experience suggests as much? How does it do so?

Essay Topic 2

What does Rushdie gain from commending the works of other writers? That is, what effect is created by his doing so, and how does it work to the advantage of the anthology?

Essay Topic 3

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?

(see the answer keys)

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