Candide & Zadig

by Voltaire

Edited and with an introduction by Lester G. Crocker

Two superb tales of adventure that are also two of the most brilliant satires ever written!

Candide and Zadig are also superb tales of adventure and action. Written in a clean, hard prose, they magically transport the reader to the four corners of Europe, to the New World,  and to the Levant.

Candide and Zadig are innocent young men who set out to test the lessons of the classroom in the outside world. The misfortunes that befall these youths - whether involving  near-strangulation in Babylon, an earthquake in Lisbon, or the wiles of swindlers in France - make for fascinating, delightful reading.

But they also provide Voltaire the opportunity to puncture the foibles of men, women, customs, and institutions with the dazzling rapier  thrusts of his incomparable irony. And, they constitute a scathing indictment of the shallow optimism that characterized Voltaire's era.

Pages in unmarked condition.  One page is dog-earred. Cover has some wear and chipping at edges and corners. Front cover has creasing at corners and near spine. Back cover has discoloration.