Introduction

Candide is a young man raised in a baron's castle in Westphalia, where his tutor Pangloss teaches him 'metaphysico-theologo-cosmolonigology' and he learns to believe that 'in this best of all possible worlds, all is for the best'. Kicked out of the castle for kissing the baron's daughter Cunégonde, he goes through war, earthquake, the Inquisition's auto-da-fé, shipwreck, slavery, robbery and fraud, wandering between Europe, South America and Turkey and seeing every kind of human suffering and absurdity. At last he and his battered companions settle on a small farm near Constantinople, and the book ends with its famous conclusion: 'We must cultivate our garden.' With biting laughter this short novel satirises Leibnizian optimism; it is the best-known work of the Enlightenment.