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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. In what year does the narrator report winning a Pulitzer?

2. Who is President of the United States when “Overture: To America” begins?

3. What time is Trump’s appointment with Sikander?

4. How many first cousins does the narrator report having?

5. At what school did the narrator’s great aunt Asma teach?

Short Essay Questions

1. What, other than seeing Latif, does the narrator note softened his mother’s demeanor?

2. What parallels does the narrator draw between his father and Trump when initially discussing their first meeting?

3. In what does the narrator report having seen the good in the United States during his youth?

4. What reasons does Asma give for disliking The Satanic Verses?

5. Aside from medical appointments, what contact does Sikander have with Trump?

6. What reasons does the narrator give for surprise at Sikander soliciting prostitution?

7. To what causes does the narrator ascribe the British decision to afford India and Pakistan independence?

8. What does Fatima expect will be Anjum’s fate, and what actually does happen to Anjum?

9. What writerly insight does the narrator report having had regarding the 2016 presidential election?

10. What does Sikander comment to Latif that he cannot do in Pakistan that he can do in the United States, and why does he say he cannot do it there?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The narrator notes dreaming of his grandmother “picking fruit in a pomegranate grove” and falling the night before she died of a heart attack (192). Explicate the imagery of the dream.

Essay Topic 2

Consider Sikander’s comment about “The whole Muslim world. Expecting failure, so failure they get” (29). What does the comment mean? Is that meaning correct? What in the novel and in experience suggests that it is or is not? How does it do so?

Essay Topic 3

Consider the comment that “America had begun as a colony and that a colony it remained, that is, a place still defined by its plunder, where enrichment was paramount and civil order always an afterthought” (xiii). Is the comment correct? What in the novel and in experience indicates that it is / not? How does it do so?

(see the answer keys)

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