1. Which town is infested by la peste in The Plague (1947) by Albert Camus?

   1. Algiers

   2. Tangier

   3. Muscat

   4. Oran

2. Simone de Beauvoir's The Blood of Others (1945) sees pacifist Jean make a volte-face to become a leader of which group?

   1. Vichy government

   2. French Popular Party

   3. French resistance

   4. German military intelligence

3. How many souls are damned to interpersonal hell in Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit (1944)?

   1. 1

   2. 2

   3. 3

   4. 4

4. Sartre considered Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Notes from the Underground (1864) to be the first existentialist novel. In which famous St Petersberg boulevard does The Underground Man hang around?

   1. Kamennoostrovsky Prospekt

   2. Nevsky Prospekt

   3. Moskovsky Prospekt

   4. Bolshoy Prospekt

5. Latin American existentialism is too often overlooked. In The Passion According to GH (1964), by Clarice Lispector, a sculptress from Rio endures an existential <i>passio</i> – lasting a single night – with a creature of this type.

   1. Butterfly

   2. Dog

   3. Cockroach

   4. Cat

6. Kafka is an immediate precursor to the midcentury existentialists. The protagonist of his unfinished novel, The Castle (1926), is known by which letter?

   1. M

   2. K

   3. Q

   4. V

7. Which 18th-century mystic's writings make life even more miserable for the neurotic narrator of Inferno, August Strindberg's pioneering 1898 novel?

   1. Swedenborg

   2. Madame Guyon

   3. Novalis

   4. Elijah ben Solomon (the Gaon of Vilna)

8. The Invisible Man of Ralph Ellison's 1953 novel steals electricity from which supplier?

   1. White Titan Light & Power Company

   2. Monopolated Light & Power Company

   3. Black Power Company, Ltd.

   4. Consolidated Quango Electric Co.

9. What does Robert Musil naughtily rename the Austro-Hungarian Empire in The Man Without Qualities (1930-43), his modernist doorstopper?

   1. Ostrichland

   2. Merdungland

   3. Kakanien

   4. Albernien

10. Which of these lines is uttered by Meursault, the protagonist of Camus' The Outsider (1942)?

    1. “It is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary.”

    2. “... and standing before this symbolic night bursting with stars, I opened myself for the first time to the tender indifference of the world."

    3. “Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.”

    4. “Nothing happens while you live. The scenery changes, people come in and go out, that's all."

Solutions

1:D, 2:C, 3:C, 4:B, 5:C, 6:B, 7:A, 8:B, 9:C, 10:B

Scores

1. 3 and above.

   This is hopeless. But then, it's also a bit arbitrary, isn't it? (That should make you more cheerful, you know.) Make like Sisyphus and try again!

2. 6 and above.

   An average score – like the one alloted to all beings, destined to lead meaningless lives. Roll your stone back up the hill, if you can muster the will.

3. 10 and above.

   A perfect score. But you know just how meaningless that is, don't you?