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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What type of tree does the fig think you should look for if you are feeling discouraged and defenseless?

2. In "The Hidden," why does Ada go to bed early the evening her aunt left?

3. In "Silences," hold old is the survivor Defne and a colleague are interviewing when that person's oldest son treats them very rudely?

4. Where do Kostas and David meet in "Remains of Love"?

5. When did Ali Zorba have a caravan of camels and get killed and buried by a road?

Short Essay Questions

1. When Ada is a baby, why does Defne ask Kostas not to tell her about the past?

2. What does Meryem remember about the garden her family had when she was a child?

3. What is Kostas working on, and what did he do last year in "Proverbs"?

4. How does the fig tree reveal that stories come together in real life?

5. What happened to the child Defne had after Kostas left?

6. How does Kostas try to ensure the fig tree will survive?

7. Where was Kostas when Defne died, and how did he learn of her death?

8. Where did Chico, the parrot at The Happy Fig come from?

9. What does the fig tree learn from a mosquito?

10. What does the fig tree learn about a military cemetery from a butterfly?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What a reader knows about events and characters is determined by the point of view in a book. What is the point of view in the book? How does Shafak use two different viewpoints in the book? How do those viewpoints influence what readers know about events and characters? How do they help readers connect with and understand characters?

Essay Topic 2

Cyprus is divided between Greeks and Turks and Christians and Muslims. How does the conflict in Cyprus affect characters? How do ethnicity and religion cause violence and loss?

Essay Topic 3

Defne worked with the Committee on Missing Persons. How did her work promote rehabilitation and healing? How did it also stir up old animosities? Was her work more of a positive influence or a negative one?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 930 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample