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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What happens, when winter comes, to their love affair?
(a) It fades to nothing.
(b) It comes out in the open.
(c) It ends.
(d) It has to endure a life of closer scrutiny.

2. Why is Nabokov's tutor rebuked by his mother?
(a) He spies on the young couple.
(b) He is not doing an adequate job.
(c) He is being rude to her children.
(d) He is repeatedly late.

3. What is Vladimir elected to, which the Tsar dissolves?
(a) Russian House of Burgesses.
(b) Russian Congress.
(c) First Russian Parliament.
(d) First Russian Senate.

4. What puts Nabokov at odds with many of his colleagues?
(a) His desire to emigrate to the United States.
(b) His opinions of the state of affairs in his home country.
(c) His inability to speak English.
(d) His Russian accent.

5. Nabokov develops a fondness for what?
(a) Lawn tennis.
(b) Poetry.
(c) Butterflies.
(d) Composing chess problems.

6. What does Nabokov confess about Yuri and himself?
(a) They wish they had girlfriends.
(b) They know nothing about America.
(c) The devastation of war is new to them.
(d) The "slums of sex" were unknown to both of them.

7. What is a crippling experience for him?
(a) Falling off a horse.
(b) Speaking English.
(c) Writing poetry in Russian.
(d) Contracting polio.

8. What types of tutors does Nabokov's father seem to intentionally choose?
(a) Tutors with widely varying backgrounds and subjects of expertise.
(b) Those who attend college at Cambridge.
(c) Those with experience working with aristocrat's children.
(d) Tutors with a background in Russian literature.

9. What does he describe with obvious revelry?
(a) The feeling of isolation and contentment when writing a work of poetry.
(b) The feeling of power and excertion in playing a game of lawn tennis with family and friends.
(c) The feeling of freedom in hunting and capturing a new species of butterfly.
(d) The feeling of selfless isolation that such prolonged expenditures of concentration engenders.

10. Why does Max endear himself to the dogs?
(a) So they do not raise the alarm when he comes back from his late night trysts.
(b) He is initially afraid of them, so he gives them treats, so they will stay calm.
(c) He loves dogs.
(d) He would like to own a kennel of his own some day.

11. To where do the boys win scholarships?
(a) Oxford.
(b) Tufts University.
(c) University of Paris.
(d) College of William and Mary.

12. How many children do the Nabokovs eventually have?
(a) Four.
(b) Six.
(c) Two.
(d) Five.

13. What does young Nabokov's status as a child of the intelligentsia often do to him?
(a) It makes him stand out in a crowd.
(b) He receives many compliments.
(c) It isolates him from his fellow students
(d) It encourages him to make friends.

14. Vladimir is raised by his own share of governesses and tutors but where does he go at the age of 13?
(a) Berkshire Boys Academy.
(b) St. Petersburg Academy.
(c) The Gymnasium.
(d) Poly Preparatory.

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

Short Answer Questions

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

2. What does he do with a poem before he writes it down?

3. Why does Nabokov have secret spots?

4. What is happening in the larger cities of Western Europe?

5. What intrigues the young Nabokov about the novel?

(see the answer keys)

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