The Man Booker Vocabulary Quiz

It is hard for him to imagine that tall, pretty woman dejected or humiliated.
--Aharon Appelfeld's Blooms of Darkness

That sentence, like the one before, is inscrutable.
--Aharon Appelfeld's Blooms of Darkness

Outside her house she knows some of what is dangerous but not all of it, and is frightened by her own ignorance, and avid for information about crime and disaster.
--Lydia Davis' "The Fears of Mrs. Orlando"

Every day these conversations, every day these stories, as thought Bhagat-ji and Abba Jan together were explicating the universe for him.
--Intizar Husain's Basti

She would have liked to say this to him in a flippant, mildly reproachful way, as if all that had been just a rather crude form of humor on his part, and she'd have liked her father to show a little contrition, and for them to have laughed about it together now.
--Marie NDiaye's Three Strong Women

She would have liked to say this to him in a flippant, mildly reproachful way, as if all that had been just a rather crude form of humor on his part, and she'd have liked her father to show a little contrition, and for them to have laughed about it together now.
--Marie NDiaye's Three Strong Women

She would have liked to say this to him in a flippant, mildly reproachful way, as if all that had been just a rather crude form of humor on his part, and she'd have liked her father to show a little contrition, and for them to have laughed about it together now.
--Marie NDiaye's Three Strong Women

But seeing him standing there in his plastic flip-flops on the concrete doorstep strewn with rotting flowers perhaps knocked loose as he flew down from the poinciana on his tired, heavy wings, she realized that he no more would have understood or grasped the most insistent allusion to the nasty comments he used to make than he now cared to scrutinize her appearance and formulate a judgment about it.
--Marie NDiaye's Three Strong Women

But seeing him standing there in his plastic flip-flops on the concrete doorstep strewn with rotting flowers perhaps knocked loose as he flew down from the poinciana on his tired, heavy wings, she realized that he no more would have understood or grasped the most insistent allusion to the nasty comments he used to make than he now cared to scrutinize her appearance and formulate a judgment about it.
--Marie NDiaye's Three Strong Women

But seeing him standing there in his plastic flip-flops on the concrete doorstep strewn with rotting flowers perhaps knocked loose as he flew down from the poinciana on his tired, heavy wings, she realized that he no more would have understood or grasped the most insistent allusion to the nasty comments he used to make than he now cared to scrutinize her appearance and formulate a judgment about it.
--Marie NDiaye's Three Strong Women

But seeing him standing there in his plastic flip-flops on the concrete doorstep strewn with rotting flowers perhaps knocked loose as he flew down from the poinciana on his tired, heavy wings, she realized that he no more would have understood or grasped the most insistent allusion to the nasty comments he used to make than he now cared to scrutinize her appearance and formulate a judgment about it.
--Marie NDiaye's Three Strong Women

But seeing him standing there in his plastic flip-flops on the concrete doorstep strewn with rotting flowers perhaps knocked loose as he flew down from the poinciana on his tired, heavy wings, she realized that he no more would have understood or grasped the most insistent allusion to the nasty comments he used to make than he now cared to scrutinize her appearance and formulate a judgment about it.
--Marie NDiaye's Three Strong Women

After a while, his fear dissipated.
--Josip Novakovich's April Fool's Day

He attempted a twinkle of joy at this thought, but his eyes were damp with commiseration.
--Marilynne Robinson's Home

"To stay for a while this time!" he amended, and took her bag from her, first shifting his cane to his weaker hand.
--Marilynne Robinson's Home

"Italianate," her father said, but that was a guess, or a rationalization.
--Marilynne Robinson's Home

In any case, it managed to look both austere and pretentious despite the porch her father had had built on the front of it to accommodate the local taste for socializing in the hot summer evenings, and which had become overgrown by an immense bramble of trumpet vines.
--Marilynne Robinson's Home

In any case, it managed to look both austere and pretentious despite the porch her father had had built on the front of it to accommodate the local taste for socializing in the hot summer evenings, and which had become overgrown by an immense bramble of trumpet vines.
--Marilynne Robinson's Home

But our large family was raucous and vociferous, like a flock of spring birds.
--Vladimir Sorokin's Bro, from The Ice Trilogy

But our large family was raucous and vociferous, like a flock of spring birds.
--Vladimir Sorokin's Bro, from The Ice Trilogy

Our morose, taciturn father seemed the only ominous crow in the flock.
--Vladimir Sorokin's Bro, from The Ice Trilogy

Our morose, taciturn father seemed the only ominous crow in the flock.
--Vladimir Sorokin's Bro, from The Ice Trilogy

Our morose, taciturn father seemed the only ominous crow in the flock.
--Vladimir Sorokin's Bro, from The Ice Trilogy

I felt sorry for her, and at the same time I was irritated by her docile and long-suffering manner.
--Peter Stamm's Seven Years

Sunken cheeks, yellow eyes deep in sockets, ribs protruding, a leg tiwsted — altogether an unbalanced body.
--U R Ananthamurthy's Samskara: A Rite for a Dead Man