Russian Prose

15 Points Per Correct Answer - No time limit  

1. In Aleksandr Pushkin's short story "Queen of Spades" there's a woman who gets killed. What secret did she conceal? She knew a method to win every card game. She knew who killed her brother. She was secretly married. She used a false identity.

2. At the end of Mikhail Lermontov's "A Hero of Our Time", the "hero" Pechorin holds a gun against his head and pulls the trigger. What happens? The gun is loaded and he dies. The gun is loaded, but doesn't go off. The gun is unloaded. It isn't a real gun.

3. Ivan Turgenev wrote the novel "Home of the Gentry" (other translation: "A Nest of Nobles"). In this story Lavretsky falls in love with Liza. How does it end? He accidently kills her. They flee to France. She decides to become a nun. She marries an other man.

4. Nikolai Gogol wrote the novel "Dead Souls". What are dead souls? people with a meaningless life dead serfs prisoners in Siberia ghosts from murdered children

5. Which Shakespeare character appears in a title of Nikolai Leskov? Romeo Lady Macbeth King Lear Ophelia

6. Ivan Goncharov wrote the novel "Oblomov". Where does the title character spend most of his time? on his farmland in a gambling house in bed in prison

7. In Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment", how does the police find out that Raskolnikov is the killer? They find the weapon in his apartment. His girlfriend gives him away. He turns himself in. They find his fingerprints on the corpse.

8. Which Dostoevsky novel contains the story of the Grand Inquisitor? The Eternal Husband The Idiot The Village of Stepanchikovo The Brothers Karamazov

9. Which historical character appears in Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace"? Ivan the Terrible Napoleon Bonaparte Peter the Great Catherine the Great

10. Vronsky is a character in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. What's not true about him? He cheats on his wife. Kitty feels attracted to him. He's an army officer. He impregnates Anna.

11. Who wrote the short story "The Lady with the Dog"? Maxim Gorki Anton Chekhov Fyodor Gladkov Boris Pasternak

12. His real name was Aleksei Maximovich Peshkov, but he used the pseudonym Maxim Gorki. What does "gorki" mean? the homeless one the bitter one the poor one the black one

13. Which character in Mikhail Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarite" is really Satan? the master Azazello Margarita Woland

14. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich". Who's Ivan Denisovich? a faithful husband a music teacher a monk a prisoner

15. In what language did Vladimir Nabokov write "Lolita"? French English Spanish Russian