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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Who dies young of a heart ailment?
(a) A Greek spelling tutor.
(b) A Polish tutor.
(c) The schoolmaster.
(d) A Ukrainian mathematician.

2. What is the response to Nabokov's published book of poems?
(a) Huge praise.
(b) Critics are not kind.
(c) Critics want to see another book published.
(d) No response.

3. Who is their first spelling tutor?
(a) Ordo.
(b) Dmitri.
(c) Max.
(d) Oliver.

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

5. Who finds himself surrounded by social elites whose view of the Revolution is, at least at first, far more positive than his own?
(a) Yuri.
(b) Dmitri.
(c) Sergey.
(d) Nabokov.

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

7. What makes becoming a Russian novelist an uphill battle for Nabokov at Cambridge?
(a) He does not speak Russian very well.
(b) The pull toward Western literature is strong.
(c) He does not know of very many Russian writers.
(d) He is not a great writer.

8. How does Nabokov describe the poet?
(a) A man who can describe any setting.
(b) A man he wishes to be.
(c) A man of simple words.
(d) A man who can feel and interpret everything that is happening in any single moment.

9. What happens to Yuri in northern Crimea?
(a) He is captured.
(b) He is married.
(c) He converts to Catholicism.
(d) He is killed.

10. What intrigues the young Nabokov about the novel?
(a) The description of nature and the American frontier.
(b) Its deliberate action and concern for honor.
(c) Its mystery and murder.
(d) Its love of America and the wilderness.

11. While he is writing a poem, to what is he prone?
(a) Long lapses of attention to the world around him.
(b) To wander aimlessly through the forest.
(c) To sing to himself.
(d) To bounce ideas off his mother.

12. How many children do the Nabokovs eventually have?
(a) Five.
(b) Two.
(c) Four.
(d) Six.

13. When does his first poem take shape in his mind?
(a) During a sudden thunderstorm.
(b) While searching for butterflies.
(c) While sitting with his mother.
(d) During a theatrical performance.

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

15. 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.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is a crippling experience for him?

2. What does Sergey do during WWII?

3. What is publication like outside of Russia?

4. Who does Nabokov meet at the age of sixteen?

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

(see the answer keys)

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