(1)

Candide

audiobook & e-book


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: Optimism (1947). It begins with a young man, Candide, who is living a sheltered life in an Edenic paradise and being indoctrinated with Leibnizian optimism by his mentor, Professor Pangloss. The work describes the abrupt cessation of this lifestyle, followed by Candide's slow and painful disillusionment as he witnesses and experiences great hardships in the world. Voltaire concludes Candide with, if not rejecting Leibnizian optimism outright, advocating a deeply practical precept, "we must cultivate our garden", in lieu of the Leibnizian mantra of Pangloss, "all is for the best" in the "best of all possible worlds".

Candide is characterized by its tone as well as by its erratic, fantastical, and fast-moving plot. A picaresque novel with a story similar to that of a more serious coming-of-age narrative, it parodies many adventure and romance clichés, the struggles of which are caricatured in a tone that is bitter and matter-of-fact. Still, the events discussed are often based on historical happenings, such as the Seven Years' War and the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. As philosophers of Voltaire's day contended with the problem of evil, so does Candide in this short theological novel, albeit more directly and humorously. Voltaire ridicules religion, theologians, governments, armies, philosophies, and philosophers. Through Candide, he assaults Leibniz and his optimism.

Candide has enjoyed both great success and great scandal. Immediately after its secretive publication, the book was widely banned to the public because it contained religious blasphemy, political sedition, and intellectual hostility hidden under a thin veil of naïveté. However, with its sharp wit and insightful portrayal of the human condition



  1. Anthology of Classic Short Stories. Vol. 7 (Humour, Satire and Tall Tales)

    O. Henry, Mark Twain, Saki, Johann Peter Hebel, Rudolf Erich Raspe, Ring Lardner, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Voltaire

    audiobook
  2. An Essay On Crime & Punishments :

    Voltaire

    audiobook
  3. Candide : The Original Manuscript

    Voltaire

    audiobook
  4. Historia de los viajes de escarmentado (Escrita por el mismo)

    Voltaire

    audiobook
  5. El mundo tal como va. Vision de Babuc, escrita por el mismo (Completo)

    Voltaire

    audiobook
  6. El hombre de los cuarenta escudos (completo)

    Voltaire

    audiobook
  7. Zadig o el destino. Historia oriental (Completo)

    Voltaire

    audiobook
  8. Micromegas, historia filosófica (Completo)

    Voltaire

    audiobook
  9. Micromegas: A Philosophical History. Illustrated

    Voltaire

    book
  10. Micromegas: A Philosophical History

    Voltaire

    audiobook
  11. The Essential Works of Voltaire : Philosophical Writings, Novels, Historical Works, Poetry, Plays & Letters

    Voltaire

    book
  12. World's Greatest Classics in One Volume : Les Misérables, Hamlet, Jane Eyre, Ulysses, War and Peace, Art of War, Faust, Don Quixote, Bushido…

    Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Stendhal, Jules Verne, Gustave Flaubert, Lewis Carroll, Henrik Ibsen, Charles Dickens, Plato, Honoré de Balzac, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Rabindranath Tagore, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Walt Whitman, Niccolò Machiavelli, Oscar Wilde, Robert Louis Stevenson, James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, William Shakespeare, Giovanni Boccaccio, Confucius, George MacDonald, Bram Stoker, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Henry David Thoreau, Weedon Grossmith, Jack London, Henry James, Louisa May Alcott, Victor Hugo, Arthur Conan Doyle, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Joseph Conrad, Jane Austen, Herman Melville, George Eliot, Laurence Sterne, Thomas Hardy, Jonathan Swift, Edith Wharton, Benito Pérez Galdós, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Alexandre Dumas, Kalidasa, Kenneth Grahame, Marcel Proust, Willa Cather, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Homer, Gaston Leroux, Charles Baudelaire, Wilkie Collins, William Makepeace Thackeray, Voltaire, Kate Chopin, Apuleius, John Milton, Frederick Douglass, Laozi, John Keats, James Joyce, Ann Ward Radcliffe, Kahlil Gibran, Kakuzo Okakura, Soseki Natsume, Princess Der Ling, H. G. Wells, W. B. Yeats, J. M. Barrie, G. K. Chesterton, T. S. Eliot, L. M. Montgomery, C. S. Lewis, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster, H. P. Lovecraft, Marcus Aurelius, Friedrich Nietzsche, Lewis Wallace, Ivan Turgenev, Anton Chekhov, Leo Tolstoy, Nikolai Gogol, Sir, George Bernard Shaw, Miguel de Cervantes, Mary Shelley, Cao Xueqin, Emile Zola, Válmíki, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, P. B. Shelley, Elizabeth von Arnim, Herman Hesse, Dante, Pedro Calderon de la Barca, Sun Tzu, Inazo Nitobé

    book