Candide (or, Optimism)

Voltaire’s “satiric masterpiece” (The Washington Post)—and the inaugural title published by Random House—retains all the celebrated wit, irony, and trenchant social commentary that made it one of the great works of the Enlightenment.

In celebration of Random House’s 100th anniversary, the publisher is reissuing this landmark publication as a hardcover edition featuring bold new cover art, a stunning paper-over-board design, and custom endpapers.

Voltaire may have cast a jaundiced eye on eighteenth-century Europe—a place that was definitely not the “best of all possible worlds”—but amid its decadent society, despotic rulers, civil and religious wars, and other ills, Voltaire found a mother lode of comic material.

Candide follows the globe-trotting misadventures of the youthful Candide; his tutor, Dr. Pangloss; a pessimistic scholar named Martin; and the exceptionally trouble-prone object of Candide’s affections, Cunégonde, as they brave exile, destitution, cannibals, and numerous deprivations, provoking both belly laughs and deep contemplation about the roles of hope and suffering in human life.

The transformation of Candide’s outlook from Panglossian optimism to realism neatly lays out Voltaire’s philosophy—that even in Utopia, life is less about happiness than survival—but not before providing us with one of literature’s great and rare pleasures.