Candide and Other Tales

A flamboyant and controversial personality of enormous wit and intelligence, Voltaire is one of the most intriguing figures of the eighteenth century Enlightenment. His masterpiece is Candide, a brilliant satire on the theory that 'the world is the best of all possible worlds.' The book traces the picaresque adventures of the guileless Candide, who is forced into the army, flogged, shipwrecked, betrayed, robbed, separated from his beloved Cunegonde, tortured by the Inquisition, etc., all without losing his resilience and will to live.