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Candide

or Optimism

By Voltaire, Burton Raffel (Translator)

(166)

| Hardcover | 9780300106558

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Book Description

In this new translation of Voltaire’s Candide, distinguished translator Burton Raffel captures the French novel’s irreverent spirit and offers a vivid, contemporary version of the 250-year-old text. Raffel casts the novel in an English idiom that--had Voltaire been a twenty-first-Continue

Critics

Candide: Or, Optimism

Candide: Or, Optimism Voltaire Penguin Translated by Theo Cuffe Paperback 200 pages October 2005 “All is for the best” in this, the “best of all possible worlds.” Never mind the atrocities and civil war in Iraq, or the genocide in Darfur, or the infe ... (read full critics)

curledup published on Tue, 7 Sep 2010

5 Reviews

I really liked the red sheep ... ;p

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Linda said on Feb 25, 2011 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

Absurd Optimism. Improbable. Strangely amusing

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D said on Sep 8, 2009 about the Audio Cassette edition | Add your feedback

This is an interesting story to read, the adventures/misfortunes the story hero, Candide, experiences are prolific. this is the first time i read Voltaire's work, in fact first time reading such type of western literature, cannot help associate this to one of the Chinese masterpieces “Journey to the ... (continue)

This is an interesting story to read, the adventures/misfortunes the story hero, Candide, experiences are prolific. this is the first time i read Voltaire's work, in fact first time reading such type of western literature, cannot help associate this to one of the Chinese masterpieces “Journey to the west 西游記". The story itself is full of imagination, almost mythological, yet flattered in reality and historical fact of his time, the earthquake, war, etc.
The philosophical argument Voltaire aimed to put across, his contempt for optimism (the 'all is for the best'), castes a complete different world view to me- in today's world people, well, at least many of them, view being optimistic as a virtue, don't let one's sufferings to beat one down.

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helyip said on Aug 21, 2009 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

So amazing. It makes you laugh and horrifies you at the same time.

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Jason Fawcett said on Aug 30, 2007 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

I read this on the beach in Cape May. A girl I was seeing at the time was with me. She related later that she had shared with her mother what I was reading. According to the mother, "Any boy who reads Candide in his spare time is a keeper."
We did not last.

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Batona said on Mar 24, 2007 about the Paperback edition | 1 feedback