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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. What ranking does Slaughterhouse-Five enjoy in the Modern Library’s list of the best English-language novels of the twentieth century?

2. At which of the following universities did Rushdie study?

3. What message does Vonnegut’s work assert is encoded in Stonehenge?

4. From which of the following does Rushdie note borrowing?

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

Short Essay Questions

1. To what does the “Lakshman rekha” refer?

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

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

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

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

6. Why does Rushdie assert that visitors to New York City feel they know it when they arrive there?

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

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

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

10. For what reason does Carlos Fuentes remark that Latin American writers hesitate to use the word “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

To what genre other than essay anthology might Languages of Truth be considered to belong? What in the text supports that identification? How does it do so?

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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