Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart opens: "Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond. His fame rested on solid personal achievements." Which community and country does the novel place its reader in?

Rabindranath Tagore wrote Gitanjali first in his own language and later put the poems into English himself. Which region and language tradition does the collection come from?

Rabindranath Tagore received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 for the English Gitanjali. That award made him the first winner of the prize from which part of the world?

Gitanjali 35 ends: "Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake." Tagore wrote while India was ruled by Britain. What does "my country" most likely name here?

A student says Gitanjali and the poems of Li Po express one single Asian outlook. Why does this claim fail?

Li Po and Wang Wei both wrote poetry in China during the eighth century. Which period of Chinese history do their poems belong to?

Wang Wei was a painter as well as a poet, and later readers called him the Poet-Buddha. Which subject is his verse best known for?

Lu Xun's "A Little Incident" is set in Beijing early in the Chinese Republic. A rickshaw puller stops to help an old woman he has knocked over, while his passenger, the narrator, wants to move on. What does the story weigh?

Mao Dun's "Spring Silkworms" follows Old Tong Bao's family as they raise a silkworm crop in a Chinese village in the 1930s. Which pressure ruins them even after a good crop?

Chinua Achebe spent much of his later career teaching literature at American universities, including Bard College and Brown University. Does that career fact explain why Okonkwo, the novel's hero, prizes wrestling and physical strength?

The Arabian Nights gathers the tales Scheherazade tells the king night after night to stay alive. Which tradition did this collection take shape in?

The Panchatantra is a collection of linked animal fables told largely as dialogues. Where and in which language tradition did it begin?

The Ramayana is attributed to the sage Valmiki and follows Rama's exile from Ayodhya and his return. Which tradition and language does this epic belong to?

The Mahabharata tells of a war between two groups of cousins, the Pandavas and the Kauravas. Which famous dialogue about duty sits inside this Indian epic?

David Diop's poem "Africa" begins: "Africa my Africa / Africa of proud warriors in ancestral savannahs / Africa of whom my grandmother sings / On the banks of the distant river." What does the last line show about the speaker?

David Diop wrote the poem "Africa" in French, and he died in Dakar, Senegal. What does his writing in French tell a reader about the period?

Diop's "Africa" speaks to a whole continent, while Things Fall Apart stays inside one village group. What does this difference show a reader?

"The Story of the Aged Mother" is a Japanese folktale. A farmer is ordered to leave his mother on a mountain, but she drops twigs along the path so he can find his way home. What does the tale finally honor?

Which pairing places each of these two works in the right country?

"The Riot" is a modern short story set in India. A reader says its events show how people behave everywhere in Asia. What is wrong with that reading?