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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. Which of the following authors does Rushdie note having read?

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

3. In which of the following of Jonson’s works does Rushdie note having acted?

4. What does Rushdie note was her preferred bookseller in Cambridge?

5. Which of the following poems by Housman does Rushdie reference?

Short Essay Questions

1. For what reason does Rushdie report Scheherazade pled for her life to be spared by her husband?

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

3. What idea about Shakespeare does Rushdie ascribe to Howard Brenton?

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

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

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

7. What does Rushdie assert that falling in love with stories awakens in children?

8. How does Rushdie report Slaughterhouse-Five presents war?

9. What is the central conceit of Now It Can Be Told?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

If the anthology were a work of fiction and nothing else about the work were changed, how reliable would the narrator be? Why?

Essay Topic 2

How does Rushdie’s narrative voice change across the essays? What effect on the reader do the changes have? How is that effect achieved?

Essay Topic 3

What literary reference is the most important of Languages of Truth? How does the anthology support such an assertion?

(see the answer keys)

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