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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 Mahmud Azari live while away from Iran?

2. What is Mahmud Azari's brother's part in the revolution?

3. According to Mr. Ferdousi, what has kept the Persian people alive and vibrant?

4. What is Razak's job?

5. To start the revolution, people in Qom commit what crime?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why is Azari shocked when he returns to Teheran for the first time in eight years?

2. Who is Mahmud Azari? What is the background of Mahmud Azari?

3. Describe the "professional wrecker" that Kapuscinski interviews in "The Dead Flame."

4. How does Mahmud Azari sum up the psychological atmosphere in Iran, and its relationship to the modernization going on?

5. Describe the march of Engelob that Kapuscinski participates in, and how it starts.

6. What anecdote does Kapuscinski share about the Persian carpet salesman, and what is this salesman's message?

7. What immediate actions does Shah Pahlavi take in response to increasing unrest just prior to full-scale revolution?

8. Who is Razak? Describe his circumstances.

9. What does Azari learn about old acquaintances upon his 1977 return to Iran?

10. What is the Shah forced by the Americans to do shortly before the revolution? How do the people react to the Shah's action?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Describe the extended metaphor Kapuscinski uses to describe the Shah and the Great Civilization. How does Kapuscinski get across the point of the Shah's failure and ignorance?

Essay Topic 2

Describe the concept of "literary reportage" and why Kapuscinski's work might be said to be written in that style. What about the style, structure, content, etc., of Shah of Shahs lends itself to literary reportage? To what extent does Kapuscinski involve himself in his own work?

Essay Topic 3

In "Daguerreotypes," Kapuscinski uses photographs to help tell the story of the buildup to the revolution. What might this method be valuable, and why might Kapuscinski have chosen to do this? What can photographs convey that other modes of expression cannot? List two examples of photographs from the book, and how Kapuscinski uses them to reveal aspects of the people and events of the revolution.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 992 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample