Voltaire's Candide, first published in 1759, is a short, ferocious satire aimed at the philosophical optimism associated with Leibniz, the idea that we live in the best of all possible worlds and that every evil serves some greater good. Its hero, the guileless young Candide, is raised in a Westphalian castle under the tutelage of the philosopher Pangloss, who teaches him that all is for the best. Expelled after kissing the baron's daughter, Cunégonde, Candide is flung across the world and into a relentless series of disasters: forced conscription and war, the Lisbon earthquake, an auto-da-fé staged by the Inquisition, shipwreck, slavery, robbery, and betrayal.
Along the way he meets a gallery of memorable companions, including the much-abused old woman, the resourceful valet Cacambo, and the pessimistic scholar Martin, who serves as a counterweight to Pangloss. A brief interlude in the utopian kingdom of El Dorado, where gold is worthless and there are no priests or courts, only sharpens the contrast with the cruelty and greed of the rest of the world. The speed and deadpan tone of the narration make the accumulating horrors both comic and appalling, and the book skewers clergy, aristocrats, colonialism, and intellectual complacency alike. Candide ends not with a grand system but with a modest resolution, that we must cultivate our garden, a line that has been argued over ever since. A defining work of the Enlightenment, it remains a sharp meditation on suffering, hope, and the temptation to explain away the world's injustices.