ATE AYEN REVIEW SESSION 22/11/2025

EASY

1.) Who was the first Asian Nobel Prize winner, a Bengali poet, who got the Nobel prize in literature in 1913 and was awarded the prize for his "profoundly sensitive, fresh, and beautiful verse"? Rabindranath Tagore

2.) In Homer's The Odyssey, which plant makes the sailors forget their desire to return home? The term, following Homeric myth, "_____-eaters" has since become an allegory for addiction and decadent culture. Lotus-eaters

3.) This Marcel Duchamp work was met with backlash from the art world at the time of exhibition, and continues to provoke audiences to this day. What is the title of this Duchamp readymade, a singular urinal submitted to the injuries Society of Independent Artists' exhibition in 1917? Fountain

4.) Gawad sa Manlilikha ng Bayan (GAMABA) or the National Living Treasures Award recognized Filipino citizens or groups for their exceptional contributions to the nation's intangible cultural heritage, such as traditional arts like weaving, epic chanting, and metalworking. Who is the Kapampangan artisan, metalsmith, and woodcarver from Apalit who was awarded the GAMABA in 2004 for this skill in the Betis craft dukit? Eduardo Mutuc

5.) Under Ferdinand Marcos' Bagong Lipunan, the reverent, mannerly new order kept at bay the country's negative elements-- even the media muckrakers were in the sewers with the filth. Proper writers wrote for the government now, in proper consultancy positions, with the Army Office of Civil Relations making sure their work aligned with the Bagong Lipunan vision, from title to final full stop. Published by Focus Magazine, this poem, written under a pseudonym, picks up where Percy Bysshe Shelly left off. With a classic motif, a politically moderate subject, elaborate rhyming couplets, and iambs as martial as goose steps in the grandstand, this poem represented all that was estimable under Marcosian poetics, the literary equivalent of crew cut hair and home by 21:00. Unbeknownst to Focus editors, however, the poem was an acrostic and spelled out a scathing indictment on the president's name, likening him to a world-renowned, and universally hated dictator. What is the title of this poem? Prometheus Unbound

AVERAGE

1.) Aliwan Paradise (1991) dir. Mike de Leon is a satire set in the semi--futuristic Philippines that now has a Ministry of Entertainment. Its two desolate lead characters Julio and Ligaya borrow their names from which Lino Brocka film? Maynila, sa mga Kuko ng liwanag

2.) In Maharishi Ved Vyasa's the Mahabharata, who is the strongest of the Pandavas, the one who killed all hundred Kaurava brothers? When he was a baby, the rock he was accidentally dropped upon broke into pieces. Bhima

3.) Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things is set in the southern Indian state of Kerala and revolves around a middle-class Syrian Christian family living in Ayemenem, focusing on the lives of fraternal twins, their mother Ammu, and other family members. What are the names of the twins? Rahel and Estha

4.) In Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, this weaver gets his head turned into that of a donkey by the mischievous fairy Puck to create chaos and to fulfill Oberon's command. The fairy queen, Titania, then wakes up under the influence of a love potion and falls in love with him. What is this weaver's name? Nick Bottom

5.) Neo is the protagonist of the Matrix franchise. Initially a computer programmer and hacker, he discovers that reality is a simulated world called the Matrix and learns he is "The One," a prophesied individual with the power to manipulate the simulation and free humanity from the machines that created it. What was Neo's birthname? Thomas A. Anderson

DIFFICULT

1.) This 1951 gothic novel by American author Shirley Jackson is the second of Jackson's published novels, and is a bildungsroman centering on lonely college freshman Natalie Waite, who descends into madness after enrolling in a liberal arts college. What is the title of this novel? Hangsaman

2.) Shakespeare's Memory is a short story by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges originally published in 1963, and follows a Shakespeare scholar who acquires Shakespeare's memory, realizes that his previous analysis of Shakespeare's work was lacking, and meditates on the nature of memory and its connection to creativity. What is the name of the scholar and main character of the story? Herman Sörgel

3.) What 1971 Hunter S. Thompson Book subtitled "A Savage Journey for/to the Heart of the American Dream" opens with the line "We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold"? Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

4.) What was the literary circle that was composed of writers in the 1920s who not only met at two bookstores along Left Blank, but also shared ideas and read each other's works at the cars and cafes around the area? Gertrude Stein and James Joyce were a part of this literary circle. Stratford-on-Odéon

5.) This novel, written by Roberto Bolaño, is narrated entirely in the first person by the sick and aging Father Umulia. Taking place over the course of a single evening, the book is the macabre, feverish monologue of a flawed man and a failed priest. Except for the final sentence, the book is written without paragraphs or line breaks. Persistently hallucinatory and defensive, the story ranges from opus Edi to falconry to private lessons on Marxism for Pinochet and his generals directed at the unspecified reproaches of "The wizened youth". What is the title of this novel? By Night in Chile