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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 does Orkideh purchase in Cyrus’s dream-vision?

2. What is the name of Ferdowsi’s son?

3. After whom does Arash long?

4. In what area had Ali done military service?

5. How does the novel render the term “negargari”?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why does Cyrus sit outside with Zee at a café near Prospect Park?

2. What does the docent who sees Cyrus collapse in the museum discuss with Cyrus?

3. How does Cyrus explain his collapse in the museum to the docents?

4. Why does Cyrus posit Sang Linh is able to function so soon after Orkideh’s death?

5. Why had Arash listened to Allegri’s Miserere?

6. How does Ali note his wife had looked at him?

7. How is Ferdowsi commissioned to write the Shahnameh?

8. Why is Arash not allowed to provide water to other soldiers?

9. What is Cyrus’s early publication history?

10. Why does Sang Linh posit Orkideh did not tell Cyrus she was his mother?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Assuming that Martyr! 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?

Essay Topic 2

To what genre other than urban fiction might Martyr! be considered to belong? What in the text supports that identification? How does it do so?

Essay Topic 3

To what other writer’s work in your experience does Akbar’s seem most similar? What makes the writers similar? What differentiates them? Overall, which do you regard as doing better at the craft of writing, and why?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 539 words (approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample