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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 chant does Zee take up alongside Ali and Rumi in Cyrus’s dream-vision?

2. Who trains Arash in his peculiar assignment?

3. How does the novel render the term “dudusch”?

4. Which of the following does Cyrus cite for comments about grief?

5. Which of the following does Kareem Abdul-Jabbar quote in the novel?

Short Essay Questions

1. How is Orkideh initially thought to have died?

2. What is Cyrus’s early publication history?

3. What gift does Orkideh give Cyrus for his project?

4. Why does Orkideh note the Mona Lisa is notable?

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

6. In the novel, what is a myth?

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

8. Per Orkideh, what marks out grace?

9. How is Ferdowsi commissioned to write the Shahnameh?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Explicate the significance of the name of any one character in the text.

Essay Topic 2

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?

Essay Topic 3

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?

(see the answer keys)

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