Candide, or Optimism
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Candide, or Optimism
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Narrated by:
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Ben Lloyd Hughes
Brought to you by Penguin.
This Penguin Classic is performed by Ben Lloyd-Hughes, best known for Divergent, Me Before You and The Inbetweeners. This definitive recording includes an introduction by Michael Wood.
Brought up in the household of a powerful Baron, Candide is an open-minded young man, whose tutor, Pangloss, has instilled in him the belief that 'all is for the best'. But when his love for the Baron's rosy-cheeked daughter is discovered, Candide is cast out to make his own way in the world. And so he and his various companions begin a breathless tour of Europe, South America and Asia, as an outrageous series of disasters befall them - earthquakes, syphilis, a brush with the Inquisition, murder - sorely testing the young hero's optimism.
© Michael Wood 2006 (P) Penguin Audio 2021
This is a classic work written in the 1750s that bears the imprint of its author, François Marie Arouet (who changed his name likely after being beaten – a été roué, à rouer (which sounds like Arouet) – to ‘Voltaire’) who by the time of its stealthy initial publication was already an accomplished playwright. It discusses (sometimes so swiftly but always pertinently) so many topics so skilfully and with great wit including religions, intolerance, the Jesuits, some papal bulls, actors in Voltaire’s plays, colonialism, slavery, misery, the Western literary canon, war, military expediency, philosophy, optimism, suicide, monarchs, regicides and a quantity of other things that will take some time to sink in.
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