View a FREE sample

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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Why does she hand him a hand mirror?
(a) He has a cut on his forehead.
(b) His face is covered in dirt.
(c) He had smashed a mosquito on his cheek.
(d) He has grown so much.

2. What tutor looks like the French actor Max Linder?
(a) A graduate student.
(b) A Greek spelling teacher.
(c) A polish medical student.
(d) A Russian literature tutor.

3. What does young Nabokov's status as a child of the intelligentsia often do to him?
(a) It encourages him to make friends.
(b) It isolates him from his fellow students
(c) It makes him stand out in a crowd.
(d) He receives many compliments.

4. What does Nabokov say they had lost that winter in St. Petersburg?
(a) Their "lovers' nest."
(b) Their "sylvan security."
(c) Their "secret hideaway."
(d) Their "true identities."

5. Other than his wife, what does Nabokov claim about his good friends?
(a) To have made no more than two good friends over a span of twenty years.
(b) He has many.
(c) They are all writers.
(d) They are artists and writers, like himself.

6. Though he is an excellent teacher to the Nabokov boys, what does Lenski find difficult?
(a) His own studies.
(b) Teaching the boys to be well-behaved.
(c) Making his lessons interesting.
(d) Teaching the boys mathematics.

7. At what does Nabokov hint about Sergey?
(a) His desire to join the military.
(b) His possible homosexuality.
(c) His interest in a girl.
(d) His wish to emigrate to America.

8. What does Sergey do during WWII?
(a) He builds weaponry.
(b) He is employed as a translator in Berlin.
(c) He emigrates to the United States and joins the Army.
(d) He is an SS soldier.

9. What does he describe with obvious revelry?
(a) The feeling of power and excertion in playing a game of lawn tennis with family and friends.
(b) The feeling of freedom in hunting and capturing a new species of butterfly.
(c) The feeling of isolation and contentment when writing a work of poetry.
(d) The feeling of selfless isolation that such prolonged expenditures of concentration engenders.

10. How would Nabokov spend hours?
(a) With a chess board in front of him.
(b) Writing poetry.
(c) Playing lawn tennis.
(d) Chasing butterflies.

11. Why does Nabokov feel exiled in Crimea, a Russian territory?
(a) He does not have his family with him.
(b) The environment is so foreign.
(c) He misses Tamara.
(d) He misses his butterflies.

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

13. What casts a cloud over the exiled Russian intelligentsia?
(a) Their inabiltiy to move to the United States.
(b) The inability to publish in their home country.
(c) Their inability to move to another European coutnry.
(d) Their inability to speak English.

14. What country does the family travel through on their way to London?
(a) Belgium.
(b) Greece.
(c) Italy.
(d) France.

15. What do Yuri and Nabokov invent?
(a) A weapon.
(b) A way to distract siblings.
(c) A tool to make household chores easier.
(d) A game.

Short Answer Questions

1. In 1904, who does Nabokov remember meeting for the first time?

2. What does he do with a poem before he writes it down?

3. Why does Nabokov ride his bike each afternoon past the house of the family's head coachmen?

4. What earns Vladimir several rebukes from the Tsarist government?

5. What is Nabokov's favorite Captain Mayne Reid novel?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 638 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample