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With its vibrant new translation, perceptive introduction, and witty packaging, this new edition of Voltaire's masterpiece belongs in the hands of every reader pondering our assumptions about human behavior and our place in the world. Candide tells of the hilarious adventures... Read Full Overview

A new, beautifully laid-out, easy-to-read edition of Voltaire's Candide. Candide is Voltaire's 1759 satirical masterpiece, wreaking havoc on the excesses of 18th century French Enlightenment culture. The story begins with our protagonist Candide, a young man living a sheltered... Read Full Overview

Candide, or the Optimist is Voltaire's hilarious and deeply scathing satire on the Age of Enlightenment.

Candide, Voltaire's magnum opus, is a matchless satirical take-down of religion, theologians, governments, armies, philosophies, and philosophers. The novella unfolds as the sheltered and privileged Candide, a young man enraptured of his facile mentor Pangloss, experiences... Read Full Overview

Theo Cuffe's marvelous translation of Voltaire's satirical masterpiece
With its vibrant new translation and perceptive introduction this new edition of Voltaire's masterpiece belongs in the hands of every reader pondering our assumptions about human behavior and our... Read Full Overview

Candide is a French satire first published in 1759 by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. The novella has been widely translated, with English versions titled Candide: or, All for the Best (1759); Candide: or, The Optimist (1762); and Candide: or, Optimism (1947)... Read Full Overview

Caustic and hilarious, Candide has ranked as one of the world's great satires since its first publication in 1759. It concerns the adventures of the youthful Candide, disciple of Dr. Pangloss, who was himself a disciple of Leibniz.
In the course of his travels and... Read Full Overview

Young Candide is ejected from his idyllic life in a protected castle and finds himself encountering wild adventures and harsh trials that put to the test his teacher's claim that we live in the best of all possible worlds.

Honest and simple to a fault, Candide... Read Full Overview

The novella has never been out of print and has been translated into every conceivable language. The text of this Norton Critical Edition remains that of Robert M. Adams's superlative translation, accompanied by explanatory annotations.

The Norton Critical Edition also... Read Full Overview

"All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds" It was the indifferent shrug and callous inertia that this "optimism" concealed which so angered Voltaire, who found the "all for the best" approach a patently inadequate response to suffering, to natural disasters, not... Read Full Overview

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.

This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely... Read Full Overview

In this splendid new translation of Voltaire's satiric masterpiece, all the celebrated wit, irony, and trenchant social commentary of one of the great works of the Enlightenment is restored and refreshed. Voltaire may have cast a jaundiced eye on eighteenth-century Europe-a place... Read Full Overview