Penguin Classics

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Do you know your Turgenev from your Tolstoy? Test your knowledge in our quiz on the Russian classics.

1) What was Anton Chekhov's occupation? (in addition to being a writer)

Doctor

Lawyer

Barber

Teacher

2) Where does Ivan Denisovich spend his day in the book by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn?

In prison

In a Soviet labour camp

In a Nazi concentration camp

In hospital

3) War and Peace is set during which war?

The Second World War

The Napoleonic Wars

The Russian Civil War

The First World War

4) How many brothers are there in The Brothers Karamazov?

Two

Three

Four

Five

5) True or false: Pushkin gave Gogol the idea for both Dead Souls and The Government Inspector.

True

False

6) Which poet died in a Soviet concentration camp for writing about Stalin: 'His fat fingers, like grubs, are greasy/His cockroach moustache sneers/His boot rims shine'?

Osip Mandelshtam

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Boris Pasternak

Anna Akhmatova

7) Which actor plays the lead role in David Lean's film of Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago?

Burt Lancaster

Marlon Brando

Gregory Peck

Omar Sharif

8) In what year was Turgenev's Fathers and Sons first published?

1789

1817

1850

1862

9) Where was Aleksandr Pushkin born?

St Petersburg

Moscow

Vladivostok

Irkutsk

10) As well as being a writer, Vladimir Nabokov was an authority on what?

Bicycles

Butterflies

Ballet

Baking

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