The Aeneid

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Candide (1759) is a bright, colourful literary firework display of a novella. With sparkling wit and biting humour, Voltaire hits several targets with fierce and comic satire: orga nised religion, the overweening pride of aristocrats, merchants' greed, colonial ambition and the hopeless complacency of Leibnizian philosophy that believes 'all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds'. Through this rites of passage story, with his central character, Candide, a naive and impressionable young man, Voltaire attacks the social ills of his day, which remarkably remain as pertinent now as ever. Show more