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

Multiple Choice Questions

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

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

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

4. What is Lenski's idea for the use of Magic-Lantern Projections?
(a) To create special effects on the wall.
(b) To create shadow puppets.
(c) To play in the light from the lanterns.
(d) To illustrate petic works with the use of slides.

5. Who does Nabokov marry?
(a) Isabella.
(b) Colette.
(c) Vyra.
(d) Yuria.

6. What does he do with a poem before he writes it down?
(a) He discusses his ideas with his father.
(b) He reads the poem to his mother.
(c) He contructs it entirely in his head.
(d) He writes it on a chalkboard.

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

8. After Cambridge, how is Nabokov's life?
(a) A middle-class life.
(b) A life of financial success and artistic destitution.
(c) A similar life to that in Russia.
(d) A life of financial destitution and intellectual opulence.

9. Why does Sergey end up in a concentration camp?
(a) Due to his outspoken opposition to the regime.
(b) He is Jewish.
(c) He is captured by the Nazis as a POW.
(d) He humiliated a high-ranking official.

10. What does Vladimir study at St. Petersburg University?
(a) Music.
(b) Law.
(c) Medicine.
(d) Art.

11. On what does the rest of the family live?
(a) On government assistance.
(b) On the sale of a handful of family jewels.
(c) His father's retirement check.
(d) On an estate in Germany.

12. What is Nabokov called in exile?
(a) A ymigry.
(b) A dirty Russian.
(c) An immigrant.
(d) A white Russian.

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

14. How does Sergei save the brothers from the Bolsheviks on the train?
(a) He holds them out a window.
(b) He shoots at the Bolsheviks.
(c) He convinces the Bolsheviks that he has leprosy.
(d) He convinces them he has typhus and that is why they are traveling alone in a locked compartment.

15. Nabokov develops a fondness for what?
(a) Lawn tennis.
(b) Butterflies.
(c) Poetry.
(d) Composing chess problems.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does she tell him when he is finished reciting the poem?

2. Vladimir is raised by his own share of governesses and tutors but where does he go at the age of 13?

3. Who rents a modest summer cottage called a dachka?

4. Why does Nabokov have secret spots?

5. How many children do the Nabokovs eventually have?

(see the answer keys)

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