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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Who was invited to speak at the opening ceremony of the 1986 PEN America event?
(a) George HW Bush.
(b) Ronald Reagan.
(c) George Shultz.
(d) George Carlin.

2. Which high school does Rushdie note Philip Roth attended?
(a) Tivy.
(b) Hillside.
(c) Weequahic.
(d) Erasmus.

3. In what year did Dickens die?
(a) 1842.
(b) 1870.
(c) 1828.
(d) 1856.

4. Which of Hans Christian Andersen’s stories does Rushdie regard as his best?
(a) “The Shadow.”
(b) “The Tinder Box.”
(c) “The Little Mermaid.”
(d) “The Snow Queen.”

5. With which of the following does the first essay of the section, “Truth,” begin?
(a) “The last time I heard from Philip Roth was in October 2017.”
(b) “India, in the mid-sixteenth century.”
(c) “Before there were books, there were stories.”
(d) “What, art thou mad? Art thou mad?”

6. What short story does Rushdie note is “perhaps the greatest short story in the English language” (167)?
(a) Joyce’s “The Dead.”
(b) Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Toy Dog.”
(c) Kincaid’s “Girl.”
(d) Bierce’s “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.”

7. To which of the following does Rushdie liken the Abbottabad military academy?
(a) École Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr.
(b) The Citadel.
(c) Annapolis.
(d) Sandhurst.

8. In what year does Rushdie note the Great Turbine Hall at London’s Tate Modern gallery opened?
(a) 2019.
(b) 2000.
(c) 2002.
(d) 2010.

9. Where was a statue of Catherine of Braganza planned to be erected?
(a) Sunnyside.
(b) Hunters Point.
(c) Astoria.
(d) Dutch Kills.

10. Which of the following resources does Rushdie note Sondheim as using?
(a) Roget’s Thesaurus.
(b) Robert’s Rules of Order.
(c) Songwriting for Dummies.
(d) Elements of Style.

11. To which of the following is Hitchens’s mind compared?
(a) Aston Martin.
(b) Alfa Romeo.
(c) Jaguar.
(d) Rolls-Royce.

12. At which institution has Rushdie lodged his papers?
(a) Emory University.
(b) New York University.
(c) University of Cambridge.
(d) Library of Congress.

13. Which of the following African-American authors does Rushdie reference?
(a) Nnedi Okorafor.
(b) NK Jemisin.
(c) Tomi Adeyemi.
(d) Ta-Nehisi Coates.

14. What writer does Rushdie note denies desire to understand other writers’ processes?
(a) Nuruddin Farah.
(b) Salman Rushdie.
(c) VS Naipaul.
(d) Bharati Mukherjee.

15. Which of the following does Rushdie call “The first great writer I knew” (158)?
(a) Faiz Ahmed Faiz.
(b) Ahmad Faraz.
(c) Mirza Ghalib.
(d) Mir Taqi Mir.

Short Answer Questions

1. Which of the following of Rushdie’s characters does he admit is autobiographical?

2. With which of the following does “Introduction to The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. IV” begin?

3. Which of the following remarks that “India is no longer India” (233)?

4. Which of the following does Rushdie note as an exception to the maxim that film adaptations of books make bad movies?

5. Who claims to have been the inspiration for Rushdie’s character Vina Aspara?

(see the answer keys)

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