A naive young man taught that this is 'the best of all possible worlds' is battered by disaster after disaster across the globe. A savage philosophical satire on optimism and human folly.
Books that mention Candide (15)
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky: “But I've read _Candide_ in the Russian translation ... in an absurd, grotesque, old translation”
Tono-Bungay by H. G. Wells: “Then I remember also a translation of Voltaire's "Candide," and "Rasselas;" and, vast book though it was, I really believe I read, in a muzzy sort of way of course, from end to end, and even with some reference now and then to the Atlas, Gibbon--in twelve volumes.”
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo: “Fortunately, Voltaire was the author of "Candide" in spite of this”
The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas by Machado de Assis: “Pangloss, he said to me as he closed the book, wasn't as dotty as Voltaire painted him.”
Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes: “the translation referred to in a letter of 1844: 'I have read Candide twenty times.'”
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón: “his favourite book open in his lap - a copy of Voltaire's Candide, which he reread a couple of times a year”
Why Read the Classics by Italo Calvino: “Essay 'Candide, or Concerning Narrative Rapidity' (primary subject)”
Virgin Soil by Ivan Turgenev: “he always kept a translated manuscript of 'Candide' in the bible box at the head of his bed”
A Separate Peace by John Knowles: “When we read Candide it opened up a new way of looking at the world to Chet, and he continued hungrily reading Voltaire, in French, while the class went on to other people.”
Fury by Salman Rushdie: “'Expect nothing, don't you know,' Dubdub told them, leftist radicals and beaded hairies alike, waving a crumbling copy of Candide.”
Italo Calvino by Martin McLaughlin: “Consisting of thirty chapters, like one of its literary models and intertexts, Voltaire's Candide, it recounts the life of the protagonist Cosima”
The Uses of Literature by Italo Calvino: “Essay "Candide: An Essay in Velocity," written as preface to an Italian edition illustrated by Paul Klee”
Words Are My Matter by Ursula K. Le Guin: “A favorite Enlightenment vehicle, the conte lends itself to satire and comedy; Voltaire's Candide is a masterpiece of the type.”
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon: “Compare Dr. Jortin's Remarks on Ecclesiastical History, vol. iv. p. 3 with a certain genealogy in Candide, (ch. iv.,) which ends with one of the first companions of Christopher Columbus.”
A Fool's Life by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa: “He moved on to the eighteenth-century philosophers but did not approach Rousseau; he drew near to the philosopher of Candide, who matched his cold, intellectual side. [auto-translated]”