2003:
3. Prose: The Novel and Short Story
(a) “Not rounding off, but opening out.” Comment on the way the writers of the novel and short story deal with the ending in relation to the whole. In your answer, you should refer to two or three novels or short stories you have studied.
(b) To what extent would you agree that plot should be valued more highly than style in the novel and short story?

2002:
3. Prose: The Novel and Short Story
(a) In novels and short stories, characters tend to have both an “inner life” and a “public life.” Both of these may be part of the fiction, if not equally so in every work. Choose examples from your reading to discuss how and how effectively these two aspects of human existence are presented.
(b) A story has to be told by somebody. Compare in detail your impressions of the “story-tellers” in two or three novels or short stories that you have studied. Was the “story-teller” the same as the writer (implicitly or explicitly) or not? How does this question influence your reading?

2001:
3. Prose: The Novel and Short Story
(a) Compare uses and/or abuses of power as a theme in novels or short stories you have read. Say what this theme and its presentation contributes to each work you discuss.
(b) Say what the titles of some individual works you have studied indicated to you at the outset. In what ways were your first impressions reinforced or altered as you read and explored each work?

2000:
3. Art of the Novel
(a) Comment on how a sense of place is established in novels which you have studied, and say what this contributes to each novel as a whole.
(b) Discuss the part played by apparently minor characters in novels which you have studied, indicating what you think are the effects of their presence.

1999:
3. Art of the Novel
(a) “Conscious and unconscious motives, assisting and frustrating circumstances: this is the territory of the novel’s action.”
How have motives and circumstances figured in novels you have studied, and to what effect?
(b) The scale of the novel has always allowed the novelist the fruitful use of time and history. How have novelists employed time and/or history to good effect in your chosen novels?

1998:
3. Art of the Novel
(a) What is the importance of characters in novels? Illustrate your answer by choosing a main character from two novels you have studied, giving some idea in each case of how the writer constructed the character.
(b) Some novels draw attention to the fact that they are inventions or constructions of the writers; others seek to conceal this artifice. Consider chosen novels in the light of this distinction, and say what the procedures adopted add to the effect of underlining or concealing the fictional status of the writing.

1997:
3. Art of the Novel
(a) “The novel has always been an international form, hard to contain within territorial boundaries… it has become increasingly a medium of global expression.”
From your own reading of chosen novels, how far do you agree with this view of the novel?
(b) Some readers perceive and enjoy a “dialogue between the reader and the novelist.” Have you found any such “dialogue” in novels you have studied, and to what effect?

1996:
3. Art of the Novel
(a) To what extent do the novels you have studied support the view that “indirect ways of arriving at knowledge always provoke the most curiosity in the reader”?
(b) An English author wrote: “It is the habit of my imagination to strive after as full a vision of the medium in which a character moves as of the character itself.”
Discuss the use made of the relationship between character and the setting for character in the novels you have studied.

1995:
3. Art of the Novel
(a) Examine the ways in which your novelists have chosen to present their characters’ thought processes, making clear what you think each author’s presentation contributes to the effect of the novel.
(b) Discuss the interplay between setting and action as part of the meaning of the novels you have read.

1994:
3. Narrative Technique
(a) “Nearly all novels are feeble at the end.”
To what extent, and for what reasons, would you defend the works you have studied against this charge?
(b) How far do you think that the way in which a writer chooses to tell a story gives indication of his/her attitude to the issues raised in the work? 

1993:
3. Narrative Technique
(a) Compare the part played by major characters with the part played by minor characters in two novels by different authors, saying why you think each author has adopted that arrangement in that particular work.
(b) How far has the presentation of the narratives you have studied departed from the chronological? Looking at two or three works, consider how appropriate the sequence of the narrative is to what each work is about.

1992
3. Narrative Technique
(a) “Some novelists invite the reader to experience the fictional world from inside the consciousness of one or more of the characters; other novelists remain omniscient. Neither method is better in itself; the sole concern is how well the narrative method fulfils the author’s particular purposes.”
Discuss either or both of these kinds of narrative techniques in relation to their appropriateness in two or three of the novels you have studied.
(b) “A novel’s setting, its home ground, very often plays a more active part in the plot than is at first apparent.”
How far do you think this remark applies to two or three of the novels you have studied?

1991:
3. Narrative Technique
(a) “The modern author is greatly influenced by the movie camera reporting accurately all it sees. Through shifting points of view, he captures immediate experience, the fleeting impression. He has devised various means of arresting the flow of time, accelerating it or compressing it; like a camera, he may cut from one scene to another.”
Discuss in detail a range of ways in which the authors you have studied seek to convey a vivid impression of the world of the novel.
Are there any important differences between the techniques of modern authors as opposed to those used by nineteenth-century writers to create a fictional world?
(b) Here is the first paragraph of a novel written in the first person:
“I was born in the city of Bombay…once upon a time. No that won’t do, there’s no getting away from the date: I was born in Doctor Narlikar’s Nursing Home on August 15th 1947. And the time? The time matters too. Well then, at night. No it’s important to be more…On the stroke of midnight, as a matter of fact. Clock-hands joined in respectful greeting as I came. Oh, spell it out, spell it out: at the precise instant of India’s arrival at independence, I tumbled forth into the world. There were gasps. And outside the windows, fireworks and crowds….Now however time is running out. I will soon be thirty-one years old. Perhaps. If my crumbling, overused body permits.”
Choose one type of narrator and describe, with detailed examples, the advantages tot the writer of using this particular type of narrator.
In the fiction you have read, what different effects have the author’s choice of narrator had?