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Candide

Voltaire

Start date: September 1, 2015

Finish date: September 30, 2015

Discussion: Short Story/Novella Collection

Why we're reading this: Short Story Classic Read, September 2015

[close] Short Story Classic Read, September 2015

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Short Story/Novella Collection

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* Short Story Classics
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last updated Sep 01, 2015 05:35AM

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What Members Thought

Mar 16, 2014 Andrea rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-sorted, fiction-humor, literature-french, list-1001-books

A fast-paced narrative of absurd stories, which reminds me of The Travels and Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen that I read earlier this year. In the vein of Swift's A Modest Proposal, it utilizes dark humour to comment on the society's downfalls. I think Voltaire's contemporaries would have enjoyed his satire to the fullest. Optimism is an interesting philosophical work to ponder over, even though I might not get it completely. ...more

6 likes · Like · see review

Jan 07, 2019 Jeff Koeppen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019-read, general-fiction, classics, translated

This was fantastic. I thought perhaps I first read this in AP English in high school during the 80s but I didn't remember much of the story. This was a great way to start off 2019.

The happy-go-lucky, gullible, eternal optimist Candide subscribes to his teacher Master Pangloss's claim that he lives in the best of all possible worlds but after being kicked out of the castle in which he lives, Candide encounters seemingly every horrible circumstance the world can throw at a person. Natural disaster ...more

2 likes · Like · see review

Jul 13, 2021 Donna rated it liked it

Voltaire’s classic satire in which the young, well-intentioned Candide is expelled from his home in a German baron’s castle after being caught kissing the baron’s young daughter, the beautiful Cunegonde. Thereafter Candide begins a journey that takes him to many far flung places, where he both witnesses and is part of a series of over the top calamities, cruelties, and misfortunes. Through it all, the gullible Candide holds fast to his former teacher’s optimistic philosophy that all that happens ...more

1 like · Like · see review