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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What puts Nabokov at odds with many of his colleagues?
(a) His opinions of the state of affairs in his home country.
(b) His inability to speak English.
(c) His Russian accent.
(d) His desire to emigrate to the United States.

2. Why is Nabokov's tutor rebuked by his mother?
(a) He spies on the young couple.
(b) He is being rude to her children.
(c) He is not doing an adequate job.
(d) He is repeatedly late.

3. What precaution does Nabokov's father take?
(a) He sends them to the United States.
(b) He changes their last name
(c) He sends his family to Crimea.
(d) He puts them in hiding in St. Petersburg.

4. Why is Lenski working as a tutor?
(a) To put himself through graduate school at the University in St. Petersburg.
(b) He is paying off a debt to Nabokov's father.
(c) To put his son through undergraduate school at Cambridge.
(d) He loves teaching children.

5. What is Vladimir elected to, which the Tsar dissolves?
(a) First Russian Parliament.
(b) First Russian Senate.
(c) Russian House of Burgesses.
(d) Russian Congress.

6. In 1910, what do the Nabokov brothers acquire?
(a) A new nanny.
(b) Teeth braces.
(c) A dog.
(d) A new estate.

7. What is a crippling experience for him?
(a) Falling off a horse.
(b) Speaking English.
(c) Contracting polio.
(d) Writing poetry in Russian.

8. What is the last Nabokov hears of Lenski?
(a) He is scrapping by, selling painted seashells on the Riviera in France.
(b) He owns a restaurant in Dublin.
(c) He is a professor at the University of Paris.
(d) He is working as an actor in London.

9. How does Nabokov's father die?
(a) He has a heart attack in Paris.
(b) He commits suicide in Paris.
(c) He has a stroke in Berlin.
(d) He is assassinated in Berlin.

10. Once, upon returning from the park with a poem freshly in his mind, what does he do?
(a) He recites it to his nanny.
(b) He recites it to his sister.
(c) He recites it to his grandmother.
(d) He decides to recite the work to his mother.

11. Why does Nabokov have secret spots?
(a) He finds them while writing poetry.
(b) He and Tamara find the secret spots.
(c) He and his brother play in the secret spots.
(d) He has found them in pursuit of butterflies.

12. What is Nabokov's favorite Captain Mayne Reid novel?
(a) Bonnie and Clyde.
(b) The Headless Horseman.
(c) Johnny Appleseed.
(d) Paul Bunyan.

13. Why does the relationship fizzle out?
(a) Tamara moves back to St. Petersburg and gets a job.
(b) Tamara is tired of him.
(c) Nabokov's father finds out.
(d) They no longer have anything in common.

14. Why is the relationship between Kirill, the younger brother, and Nabokov more like that of distant friends?
(a) They do not get along.
(b) They have such different personalities.
(c) Due to Kirill being given up for adoption.
(d) Due to the large gap in their ages.

15. Why do they hire the village schoolmaster, though he is not technically one of the family's regular tutors?
(a) To give them writing lessons.
(b) To give them mathematics lessons.
(c) To give them a crash course in the Russian language.
(d) To give them French lessons.

Short Answer Questions

1. Who is he surprised to see on stage as "The Gala Girls?"

2. What is Nabokov called in exile?

3. The boredom of the audience at these poetry performances is obvious to everyone but whom?

4. What does the headstrong Yuri in later life introduce to Nabokov?

5. What does Nabokov say they had lost that winter in St. Petersburg?

(see the answer keys)

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