Candide (version 2)

Candide begins in a protected paradise and ends in a garden. Between them lies one of the most savage, funny, and unflinching portraits of human cruelty ever written. Young Candide is raised in a noble German castle to believe, by his tutor Pangloss, that everything in existence tends toward the best possible outcome. Then life intervenes: war, earthquake, torture, execution, slavery, and the gradual stripping away of every comfortable illusion. What follows is a picaresque journey across continents as Candide and his beloved Cunegonde discover that the world is absurd, violent, and indifferent to their suffering. Voltaire's genius lies in his refusal to let either his characters or his readers off the easy hook of optimism. The prose is blade-sharp, the observations unbearable in their accuracy. This is Enlightenment satire at its most dangerous: a book so incendiary Voltaire denied writing it, yet so essential it has never stopped being relevant.