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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. Where does Sem try to catch up with his email on Harun's laptop, but he cannot remember his passwords?

2. When Sem and Harun were at a cafe during a rain storm, where did a man tell them to go back to?

3. What was the name of the street where Sanja and Sem lived two years before her stroke?

4. When does Sem remember that Sanja stepped between him and a murderer?

5. What did Sem imagine he would do in his 50s?

Short Essay Questions

1. Who does Sem remember seeing outside the hotel when he attended the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1999?

2. What is Sanja's situation by the time she has been in the hospital for four nights?

3. How has Sem noticed America closing itself up from the outside world?

4. What is unusual about the corridor from the elevator to Sem and Sanja's apartment door, and what problems has that caused?

5. What form of address has Hraun used for Sem?

6. What does Sem remember Harun telling a college interviewer?

7. What type of tennis shoes does Sanja have, and why are those typical of who she is and what she is like?

8. In what language does Sem write?

9. What did Sem find interesting about photographs "M" took of their apartment?

10. Why did Sanja say she was a smoker when she quit after Sem's heart attack?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Sem still writes in Bosnian, not English. What is Sem’s relationship to language? Why does he consider himself to be a "prisoner of [his] language" (97)? Why does he still write in Bosnian?

Essay Topic 2

Both Sem and Harun’s lives have been affected by trauma. How have Sem and Harun’s lives been affected by trauma? How do they process the trauma they have experienced differently?

Essay Topic 3

What a reader knows about events and characters is determined by the point of view in a book. What is the point of view in the book? How does the point of view influence what readers know about events and characters?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 942 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample