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

Multiple Choice Questions

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

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

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

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

5. What is the subject of this chapter?
(a) Nabokov's brother, Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov.
(b) Nabokov's uncle, Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov.
(c) Nabokov's tutor, Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov.
(d) Nabokov's father, Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov.

Short Answer Questions

1. Why is Lenski working as a tutor?

2. What does the revolution do to most of the Russian writers and artists?

3. How is Nabokov's life at Cambridge, compared to his former existence?

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

5. In 1914, a sixteen-year-old Yuri visits the Nabokovs,and what does he produce?

(see the answer keys)

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