Voltaire: Candide [1997] paperback

Candide (1759) was one of Voltaire's most characteristic, philosophical tales. The eponymous young hero and his friends move through a series of tortures, tragedies and reversals of fortune, in the company of Pangloss, a metaphysico-theologo-cosmolo- nigologist' of unflinching optimism. The result is one of the glories of eighteenth-century satire.