Russian Literature - Quiz 1

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1)  Who wrote the 1859 novel Oblomov, whose lazy, daydreaming titular character satirizes the contemporary Russian nobility?
A.  Andrey Bely
B.  Ivan Goncharov
C.  Ivan Bunin
D.  Vladimir Mayakovsky


 2)  What is the famous opening line of Leo Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina?
A.  It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
B.  All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
C.  It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
D.  Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.

3)  What novel written by Nikolai Gogol traces the adventures of the landless social-climbing Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, a dismissed civil servant out to seek his fortune?
A.  Dead Souls
B.  Nevsky Prospect
C.  The Overcoat
D.  The Government Inspector


 4)  Which of the following Vladimir Nabokov works was originally written in his native Russian?
A.  Bend Sinister
B.  Invitation to a Beheading
C.  Pale Fire
D.  Pnin


 5)  What is the name of the central character in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment?
A.  Rodion Raskolnikov
B.  Fyodor Karamazov
C.  Prince Myshkin
D.  Porfiry Petrovich
6)  Which of the following is not a play written by famed Russian dramatist Anton Chekhov?
A.  The Cherry Orchard
B.  Uncle Vanya
C.  Three Sisters
D.  The Lower Depths


 7)  One of the few outspoken writers to survive Stalin’s regime, which poet was nevertheless prevented by the Soviet government from publishing any work from 1923 to 1940?
A.  Anna Akhmatova
B.  Boris Pasternak
C.  Osip Mandelstam
D.  Marina Tsvetayeva


8)  Which 19th-century poet, novelist, and playwright is widely considered the father of modern Russian literature?
A.  Aleksandr Ostrovsky
B.  Ivan Goncharov
C.  Aleksandr Pushkin
D.  Mikhail Lermontov


9)  Which historical pair are the subjects of the novel that “the Master” is writing in Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita?
A.  Pontius Pilate and Jesus
B.  Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky
C.  Mark Antony and Cleopatra
D.  Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn


10)  When was The Gulag Archipelago published?
A.  1973
B.  1958
C.  1968
D.  1974

11)  Who refused the Nobel Prize for Literature for a work that was banned in the USSR?
A.  Tatyana Yesenina
B.  Andrei Zarin
C.  Boris Pasternak
D.  Vladimir Lenin

12)  How many real brothers are there in The Brothers Karamazov?
A.  3
B.  5
C.  2
D.  9

13)  Which poet and prose writer is known as Russia's national poet.
A.  Pushkin
B.  Lermontov
C.  Minaev
D.  Mandelshtam

14)  Which writer spent time in a Siberian prison in the 19th century?
A.  Babel
B.  Dostoyevsky
C.  Mandelshtam
D.  Solzhenitsyn

15)  Yuri Zivago was a 
A.  Poet
B.  Chemist and Poet
C.  Physicist and Poet
D.  Mathematician

Answers:

  1. B
  2. B
  3. A
  4. B
  5. A
  6. D
  7. A
  8. C
  9. A
  10. B
  11. C
  12. A
  13. A
  14. B
  15. C