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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 does the old woman in Part IV from Deir ez-Zor tell Mazen?

2. What kind of shipping container does Mina meet patients in in Part IV?

3. Who does Mina think Mazen's son looks most like?

4. What does Mazen say about Mina's driving skills in Part III?

5. What is the first sentence Mina writes in her correspondence to Mazen to help repair their relationship in Part III?

Short Essay Questions

1. What destroys the writer's family home in Lebanon eventually?

2. In Part IV, what does Mina realize about the economic situations of the refugees she sees in the camps?

3. Why does Mazen get so mad at the western journalists' questioning of Sammy and Samaiya?

4. What is the jewel in the dream house the writer's father built in Lebanon?

5. What happened to Linda Abdullah's father at the end of his life?

6. What is the relationship between Sammy and Sumaiya like?

7. What does Mina think of George W. Bush's post-9/11 speech?

8. Why does Sammy tell the journalists they finally left Syria?

9. What affliction does one woman tell Mina she has in Part IV that Mina can find no physical cause for?

10. What can Mina not help thinking about women from Deir-ez-Zor?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

How does Alameddine treat the topic of empathy throughout the novel? Why do you think Alameddine has the unnamed writer proclaim that empathy is overrated? Write an essay explaining your answers, citing specific references to the text to help support your conclusions.

Essay Topic 2

What do you think Alameddine is trying to communicate to the reader with the unnamed writer's panic in hiding in his hotel room for much of his time on Lesbos? Write an essay explaining your answers, citing specific references to the text to help support your conclusions.

Essay Topic 3

What do you think Alameddine is trying to reveal to the reader at the many points in the novel in which he points out Western - and particularly American - apathy towards refugees from other parts of the world, especially the Middle East? Write an essay explaining your answers, citing specific references to the text to help support your conclusions.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 775 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample