A Municipal Report – General Understanding Quiz

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Approximate Reading Times

Quick Read: under 5 minutes
Short Story: 5 to 30 minutes
Novelette: 30 to 90 minutes
Novella: 1.5 to 2.5 hours

The Bog Man
Short Story by Margaret Atwood. A university student’s hero worship of her archaeology professor leads to a torrid affair during which she accompanies him to inspect a 2,000-year-old body preserved in a peat bog. As his invisible wife comes between them, she feels “cheap and furtive” and ends the relationship.
Pret in the House / Ghost Trouble
Grade 3-4 Story by Ruskin Bond. A pret (ghost) moves into a family’s house. Fortunately, it is of the mischievous rather than dangerous or hungry variety. When its playful pranks become too annoying, the family decides to move away. However, this does not prove as easy as they had hoped.
Wandering Willie’s Tale
Novelette by Sir Walter Scott. A Scottish Lord dies as a tenant hands over long outstanding rent. During the commotion, the money disappears. The Lord’s son doesn’t believe the rent was paid, and demands payment. A mysterious stranger helps the tenant by accompanying him to hell to collect a receipt.

Suspicion
Short Story by Dorothy Sayers. Real estate agent Harold Mummery fears for his ailing wife. Police are on the hunt for a cook who has poisoned several of her employers. When a chemist identifies arsenic in some hot chocolate their new cook prepared, he rushes home.
Only the Dead Know Brooklyn
Short Story by Thomas Wolfe. New arrivals in a city often learn things and visit places that long-term residents don’t know about. Here, two highly opinionated men differ over the narrator’s warnings about the dangers of the “nice sounding” neighborhoods the stranger has chosen for his nightly walks.
The Barber’s Trade Union
Short Story by Mulk Raj Anand. When a young Indian barber tries to improve his appearance by dressing more professionally, he is verbally abused and humiliated by village elders for acting above his caste. Rather giving in, he changes the way he works and turns the tables on his detractors.
Landscape with Flatiron
Short Story by Haruki Murakami. A troubled young woman and middle-aged artist bond over bonfires the artist constructs on a beach. Both appear to be trying to escape unstated traumas from their past. Their lives are contrasted with that of the woman’s boyfriend, a carefree surfer and musician.

Two Friends
Short Story by Guy de Maupassant. After a few drinks, two foolhardy friends set off to escape the deprivation and boredom of the 1870-1871 siege of Paris by going fishing in the “no-man’s land” between the two armies. They catch many fish, but don’t get a chance to enjoy them.
The Cow of the Barricades
Short Story by Raja Rao. India’s struggle for independence saw division between those who supported Gandhi’s directive of passive resistance and those who advocated violent confrontation. Here, a revered cow is martyred after leading a group of peaceful protesters and standing upon the barricades as fighting is about to begin.
The Signal-man
Short Story by Charles Dickens. Part of the attraction here is that, although generally considered a ghost story, there is no hard evidence of one. Dickens masterfully uses setting to create a forbidding, unearthly atmosphere, and then leaves the question of the ghost to the reader.