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andrewlawston 's review for:
Candide
by Voltaire
"Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres." (In this country, it's good to kill an admiral from time to time, in order to encourage the others)
Candide remains an incredible book. An apparently picaresque and even Pythonesque romp where a young man seeks to marry his childhood sweetheart in spite of lurid misadventures, as he clings to his old teacher's maxim that everything happens for the best in this "best of all possible worlds".
It's not all adventure and silliness though, Voltaire's short novel is probably the definitive social satire, brutally skewering religion, politics, the military and various philosophies. This is an 18th Century French book that has seeded idiomatic phrases into the English language. Il faut cultiver notre jardin, le meillure des mondes possibles and of course pour encourager les autres.
In this absurd tale where cannibals will let you out of the cooking pot if you can prove you killed a Jesuit, and where even hanging and dissection are not always fatal, Voltaire never misses an opportunity to have a good laugh at the world. Read it, and better yet, read it in French.
Candide remains an incredible book. An apparently picaresque and even Pythonesque romp where a young man seeks to marry his childhood sweetheart in spite of lurid misadventures, as he clings to his old teacher's maxim that everything happens for the best in this "best of all possible worlds".
It's not all adventure and silliness though, Voltaire's short novel is probably the definitive social satire, brutally skewering religion, politics, the military and various philosophies. This is an 18th Century French book that has seeded idiomatic phrases into the English language. Il faut cultiver notre jardin, le meillure des mondes possibles and of course pour encourager les autres.
In this absurd tale where cannibals will let you out of the cooking pot if you can prove you killed a Jesuit, and where even hanging and dissection are not always fatal, Voltaire never misses an opportunity to have a good laugh at the world. Read it, and better yet, read it in French.