Candide, or optimism - Voltaire

‘You have been to England…
Are they as mad there as in France?’

Brought up in the household of a German Baron, Candide is an impressionable young man whose tutor, Pangloss, has instilled in him the belief that ‘all is for the best’. But when his love for the Baron’s rosy-cheeked daughter is discovered, Candide is cast out to make his own fortune. As he and his various companions roam over the world, an outrageous series of disasters befall them – earthquakes, syphilis, a brush with the Inquisition, murder – sorely testing the young hero’s optimism. In Candide, Voltaire threw down an audacious challenge to the philosophical views of his time, to create one of the most glorious satires of the eighteenth century.

Theo Cuffe’s translation brilliantly conveys Voltaire’s acerbic humour. In his introduction, Michael Wood discusses Voltaire’s satirical attack on contemporary philosophy; his edition also contains a map, extensive notes, table of dates, further reading and appendices including extracts from Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary.